LIFE INTERRUPTS LIFE. It may be a marriage, a birth, a graduation, a job change. It could be a death, a divorce, a disaster, an accident.
In an instant everything of your mundane or over-stressed daily life comes to a halt and the life-interrupting event changes your entire perspective on this day. Tomorrow will never be the same.
Do you stop to allow a relationship of love for another person to interrupt your tireless routine?
The pattern in the life of the Son of Man continually allowed for interruption as opportunity to glorify God through compassion for others.
John 2: The next day there was a wedding celebration in the village of Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. 3 The wine supply ran out during the festivities, so Jesus’ mother told him, “They have no more wine.”
4 “Dear woman, that’s not our problem,” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.”
5 But his mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
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John 4: 6 Jacob’s well was there; and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. 7 Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” 8 He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food.
Pretty ordinary stuff of life. Jesus and His Disciples are walking between towns. They have to stop for lunch and buy food. Jesus is thirsty for a drink of water.
The interruption brings Jesus to reveal to a Samaritan woman: “I Am the Messiah!”
Rather than continuing back to Galilee, Jesus and the Disciples go with the interruption and stay in that village for two days.
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Jesus continues to live an ordinary daily life as Son of Man. He travels with other pilgrims to festivals in Jerusalem. Miracles are just a moment in a crowded and busy day:
John 5: “Would you like to get well?”
7 “I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
8 Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
You know the witness of the miracle; but other than that, in the life of Jesus and the life of one man who had been lame for a long time on every day of his life, it was just an interruption.
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The examples are numerous throughout the Gospels. The interruptions to Jesus schedule even include interruption of life to the point of interrupting death. Jesus did this more than once.
Jesus interrupts our thinking that life is burdensome or ordinary.
Every moment has the possibility for a miraculous interruption of interaction in the will of God.
A sudden and unexpected death… or a gradual, painful fading away: all of it is expected in one manner or another. No life is ordinary in the eyes of God.
The pregnancy and birth, the courtship and marriage, the sickness and health: all are ordinary stuff of life in the eyes of God and the walk of man.
Therefore let us be more like Jesus with a willingness to allow life to interrupt our daily life as we have seen it. The Lord has a miracle for us; if not now, in His own eternal time.
John 14: “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”
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Life interrupts life. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. Expect it.
Greet life’s interruptions like the One who interrupted the world with His loving interruption of hope.
Matthew 24: 37 “When the Son of Man returns, it will be like it was in Noah’s day. 38 In those days before the flood, the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat. 39 People didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes.
40 “Two men will be working together in the field; one will be taken, the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding flour at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.
42 “So you, too, must keep watch! For you don’t know what day your Lord is coming.
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P.S. The above post was not intended to be my first blog post.
This is dedicated to my brother in the Lord, Vinny LaGuardia, who was murdered by a gunman who opened fire on this innocent man and others at a township meeting last night. Vinny played drums for our praise band at Benders Mennonite Church and was a friend.
Jesus Christ, our Lord will comfort Vinny’s widow, our dear sister in the Lord. We pray for his family, neighbors and many friends, and also the families of the others slain. May the Lord have mercy on the soul of their killer.
Roger Harned
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