You never think about how nice it is to keep your car in a garage, out of the hot sun or pouring rain, and where you can get into it just a few steps from inside your house - until you don't have it. We got a notice last Friday that our driveway would be blocked due to construction for up to seven days, so - come 7 A.M. on Monday morning we better move our vehicles out of the garage and to places not blocked by a NO PARKING sign. They weren't kidding! This is the front of our house Monday afternoon, and that's my van parked down the street in the second picture and Donna's car is down the street in the first one.Interruptions are an interesting part of life. Jesus seemed to enjoy and even treasure them as he did some of his most amazing things for people who the apostles wanted to ignore. I've always struggled with interruptions because I am an organizer, planner, get-it-done-and-move-on-the-next-thing kinda person. I get things fixed in my head as to how it SHOULD go or how it SHOULD happen, and then - BLAM - I get hit between the eyes with an unexpected interruption (isn't that a redundancy?), and I have to adjust.
No - adjust isn't the right word. I have to grow. Growth doesn't take place in the smooth routines of life. It happens when we are forced to change, stretch, compensate, and adapt. In short, I have to think! That is one of the amazing ironies about church life. Church is always changing! Even in churches where people think it's a plague from Satan, they still change. However, it's not a spiritual growth kind of change. It's more a mindless evolution of culture impacting people's lives that slowly changes small things in small ways. They may think they are just like they were in the 1950's, but they look nothing like they did back then.
Our little Root residence interruption just reminded me that God usually has to interrupt our lives in a fairly significant way, many times, before we are sensitive to the next step in our spiritual development that he wants us to take. Comfortable people should be extremely thankful people, but unfortunately, they tend to be self-centered people.
Had in "road construction" in your life lately? What is God wanting you to learn?
4 comments:
SOOOOO extremely blessed by this post today. Thanks for the wonderful reminder of the way God keeps pursuing us.
Funny that this would be your post today after the kind of day I've had. (And, its only 2:30.) I'm learning that, as a mom of 4, most days don't go like I had planned. Really....I'm wondering why I even plan at all. :) The good news is, however, that Curtis's x-rays came back fine. What a day....what a day.
Smack, right in the middle of my forehead. Now I just have to figure out what I am supposed to grow into because of the "no driving for 2 weeks" restriction that has interuppted my life. Thanks, Mike, for another way of looking at things.
Nancy Jantz
Excellent thoughts
Post a Comment