He Went About Being Interrupted

His schedule was extremely tight. He only had three years to transform the world. His task was to reveal the true nature and love of God to a world that had rejected and missed every attempt at that task since man first walked on the earth. Big task. Impossible task. And only three years?

He of course did what anyone would do. He attended several management and motivational seminars, formed a group of movers and shakers as his core team, offered a stock option to raise millions for a nationwide publicity blitz the likes of which no one had ever seen before, hired the top consultants to reshape his appearance and mold his personality into star quality, lined up sports stars and celebrities to bombard the world with testimonials and signed on with the very top management team to book appearances in the top media outlets and speaking concerts in every possible venue. That seems to be the only way to make any significant impact whether the time is long or short.

But He did not do any of that. He collected a ragtag group of fishermen, dreamers, a red neck and a liberal or so, a group no one had ever heard of before. Then he just went about touching folks and meeting needs.

I don’t have much of a theology anymore. That stuff just bores me beyond my capacity to be nice. I am just a simple fan of Jesus Christ and I wish I was more like Him in every aspect of my life. I am a long way from getting there, but that is the one goal of my life.

One of the things I admire the most about Him is that He just went about being interrupted and now we gather to study His interruptions. He did not own a Daytimer. He did not seem to even have a plan in mind. He simply got up every morning and went strolling through the world teaching as He walked and waiting to be interrupted. And He was interrupted. Constantly interrupted.

A woman touched His robe as He walked by…interruption

A high mucky muck came to see Him late one night…interruption

A tax collector climbed a tree in His path…interruption

They tore up the roof of a house to let a cripple down to him…interruption

A man begged Him to come to his house to save a dying child…interruption

 A woman washed His feet with her tears while He was trying to speak…interruption.

He could not get to a friend’s house until he had been dead for three days and had to be resurrected. He was late because of interruptions.

He was interrupted because He was interruptible. I find that to be amazing and very hard to do. When I am speaking someone better not tear up the roof. I spoke in Edmonton Canada which is evidently the world center for pick-up trucks with loud mufflers. The conference room was near the street so there was a constant barrage of loud take-offs from the stop sign. I was almost ready to shoot out their tires and rip off those high-dollar mufflers that did not muffle. Not Him. They tear up the roof, He stops His speech in mid-sentence and heals a man.

How do I get that patient? How do I put aside my ego long enough to recognize there might be something more important than what I am saying or doing?

And, it may well be that this model of walking through the world being interrupted is the living illustration of the Christian life.

The usual concept of the Christian life is a constant struggle to maintain some emotional pitter-patter in the heart that we think indicates God’s presence in us and our closeness to him. There seems to be a constant flow of new plans for becoming a more mature Christian, but the problem is the end of the search has never been defined. What is a mature Christian? How do we know we are there or even on the way there? And we are constantly bombarded with sermons that tell us we aren’t close enough or do not love enough.

Could it be that we also are to simply walk through the world and be interrupted? Could that be the real way we are to live it out? Doesn’t sound holy enough. Doesn’t sound like enough of a struggle with the Devil. But I am convinced that this is exactly how the Christian life is designed to be and how it works.

I may be way off base here and I am not recommending this as a way to be for anyone else. All I can do is report on how I am trying to make it work. I have tried the long hours of Bible study and prayer route to being a “mature” Christian. I am just not good at it. I love the Bible but to read it for “brownie points with God” or some magical key to growth bores me beyond belief.

Long prayer sessions are the best way I know for me to feel guilty. I either go to sleep or my mind wanders until I am convinced I have Attention Deficit Disorder. I struggled with that for years without finding any peace. I was convinced there was something wrong with me, and that other folks seemed to have something I could not find. Everyone seemed to be more spiritual than I and therefore much better Christians.

Then I began to study the life of Jesus. If He came to show us the Father and to show us how to live then the more I could be like Him the closer I would be to doing it right.

His being interrupted fascinated me. He did not spend hours and hours studying the scriptures, going to church, or praying. He just went out and touched everyone who interrupted Him.

That became my plan for following Him and His leadership. Almost every morning, well at least a lot of mornings before I get out of bed, I work my way through the model prayer Jesus left us—I take each word and try to grasp as much meaning as possible. Over the years this prayer has become more and more meaningful to me and I continue to learn from each word. It has become my prayer life.

Apart from special times when I am praying for someone specific, that time with His prayer model is my time of prayer. I especially try to dwell on “Thy will be done” I am sort of reporting for duty. Then I look for the interruptions.

That is not as passive as it sounds. It does not mean I have no involvement in the process. It means I must be aware of those around me, sensitive to the needs I bump up against and ready to do random acts of kindness.

Over the years I have been amazed at how often I have ended up at the right place at the right time and, at times, it has been quite dramatic. Most of the time, it is just a smile and a kind word. It is amazing how powerful just being willing to notice and listen to those we meet can be. If every Christian was busy doing random acts of kindness we would transform the world.

One thing is sure, I may not have changed everyone or anyone, but it has certainly changed me. As I said in the last blog, “When we go out and act like God acts we come back feeling like God feels.”