Tag: Dealing with Interruptions

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

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Life brings all kinds of interruptions to our plans. And those interruptions come from all kinds of different sources. But sometimes they come from nothing. What I mean is that sometimes our lives get interrupted when what we expected to happen, what we expected God to do, doesn’t happen. We find ourselves facing downtime when we thought we were going to be actively doing something…anything. As we continue in the second-to-last part of our teaching series, we are talking today about what to do when we face the interruption of waiting.

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

So, the other day, I had told somebody that I would show up to help them do something at a certain time. I’m the kind of person who would rather be ten minutes early than two minutes late. So, true to form, I showed up about fifteen minutes before I said I would be there. That gave me time to make sure everything was ready when they arrived. As I was pulling in, though, I got a text: “Running a bit behind.” Given who was meeting me, I wasn’t all that surprised. I went inside and started doing the things I knew I needed to do. By the planned meeting time, all of that was done. So, I twiddled my thumbs for a bit. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen. I expected a little late, but not that much. So, I started doing some other things I hadn’t planned on doing. Then I got those done too. The waiting wasn’t what I planned, but it turned out more useful than I expected. 

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A Choice of Response

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For the last few weeks, we have been talking about the various kinds of interruptions we might experience as we go through our lives. We’ve talked about divine interruptions as God invites us to go in a new direction as well as interruptions from sin – both the sin of others and our own sin. So many of the interruptions we face on a regular basis, though, aren’t critical interruptions, they’re just irritating. In those situations, knowing how to respond to the person who is the cause of the interruption matters a lot. This is especially true when the interruption turns out to be God-ordained after all. In part four of our series, we are taking our cue from the example of Jesus. Let’s dig in together.

A Choice of Response

Covid was tough. It was tough for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons it was tough for me personally was that I wound up working from home a lot. With three still-young children. Who were all doing school from home. Do you know how hard it is to write a sermon or a Bible study outline when you’ve got three kids coming to you on a rotating basis (or simultaneously) either needing help with their schoolwork, needing to be reminded to do their schoolwork, or just needing to be entertained for a few minutes so they don’t start creating their own entertainment which usually creates more problems than it solves? About as hard as it is to get anything else done with all of those things going on. Many of you know those woes far better than you’d like. 

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Making the Broken Beautiful

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Sometimes the interruptions God allows to come to our lives are disruptive, they are inconvenient for us, but they aren’t necessarily destructive. Other times, though, life’s interruptions shake things apart so thoroughly that we’re not sure they will ever be able to be put back together again. Last week we talked through God’s interruptions to Abraham’s life. Those were hard, but the interruptions His great-grandson faced were hard on a whole other level. Let’s talk through Joseph’s story, how his life was interrupted, and what his response can teach us for handling our own hard interruptions.

Making the Broken Beautiful

Have you ever had things go from bad to worse? Sick kids are no fun. Several years ago, we had one sick kid. Then another. Then another. Then one of us went down. The dominoes just kept falling. And you would think that was bad enough, but you would be wrong. Just at the point that everybody was sick and all of the accompanying laundry was piling up to the ceiling…the washer broke down. We were at the store the next day. The nice salesman asked us what kind of a washer we were looking for, and we told him we were interested in whatever he had in stock that we could take home that day. I’m happy to report that we are all still alive and well, but that was a rough few days. In the grand scheme of things, though, that particular life interruption wasn’t so bad. It certainly could have been worse. Sometimes when life flies apart on us it feels like things shatter so thoroughly it’s hard to imagine there could ever be a way to put things back together again. 

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Digging in Deeper: Luke 2:1-4

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“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole empire should be registered. This first registration took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So everyone went to be registered, each to his own town. Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family line of David.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are two basic categories of things that can get in the way of our pursuit of our plans in a given situation. There are distractions, and there are interruptions. Those may sound like synonyms, but I would argue there is a subtle difference between them. Distractions are obstacles we don’t mind and may even choose to have on our path. Interruptions are frustrations over which we may not have any control. Distractions we have some measure of control over stopping or even preventing. Interruptions are often things we are powerless to stop or avoid. Joseph’s life seemed like it was one big series of interruptions. But as it turns out, God was the one pulling the strings. Let’s talk about why this matters for us.

Continue reading “Digging in Deeper: Luke 2:1-4” →