When
I was in the early stage of writing Overcoming
Shyness, my computer crashed. It was an
unforgiving hard disk failure, and all of the
data on it was lost. Because I hadn't backed up
or printed out what I was writing for over a
week, I lost about two chapters that I had
carefully crafted for the book.
I probably don't need to tell you
that nothing is more devastating to a writer than
losing material you've written. You feel like
you'd rather be mugged on a subway.
There's one thing, though, that's
almost as hard as losing what you've written--and
that's purposely deciding to discard it and start
over. We just don't like to do it; yet sometimes
it's exactly what we should do to get the best
results. In this case, I had no choice. The
decision was made for me.
Because I had to start on a clean
slate when I began writing again a few days
later, I decided to try a different approach to
the book. I was pleased to find that this new
direction seemed to work better, and I wasn't
struggling for ideas as greatly. In the end, I
never did rewrite the chapters that I lost that
morning. I'm now convinced that this material
would have bogged the book down and that the book
is stronger for what I left out.
The incident is an interesting
example of one way that an unwelcome interruption
sometimes brings us a surprising benefit. We're
headed fast down a track that we don't realize is
less than the best for us, but the interruption
allows us to pause and reconsider our options.
Apart from the computer mishap, I'm certain that
I either would have left that material in the
book or taken much longer than I did to decide
not to use it.
A friend of mine received a
similar benefit from an unwanted interruption in
her life. She had carefully planned a major move,
but then fell ill and had to cancel her plans.
"I realize now that God simply stopped
me," she says. "With hindsight, it's
clear to me that this move wouldn't have been
right for me."
Interruptions may work to our
benefit in other ways as well. They may be God's
way of bringing new opportunities into our life,
or new relationships, or his means of providing
us with information that we need. Interruptions
also bring us some of our best opportunities for
sharing our faith, and for giving help and
encouragement to others.
Putting Interruptions in
Perspective
I'm not blithely suggesting that
every intrusion on our schedule is the gateway to
an unexpected blessing, or that we're less than
spiritual if we don't feel like singing the
Hallelujah Chorus every time an interruption
occurs. I scarcely need to describe my own feelings at that moment
when I realized that my computer absolutely,
positively wasn't going to boot any more.
Some interruptions are simply
that--interruptions. They are diversions from
what God wants us to do, and we need to treat
them as such--to slough them off, or to deal with
them as quickly and efficiently as possible. We
can get too analytical about such interruptions,
and try to read guidance into them that simply
isn't there.
At the other extreme, we each
experience from time to time setbacks that are
major broadsides to our life--like the death of a
loved one, the breakup of a relationship, or the
loss of a job that we love. God never expects us
to respond to such misfortunes like robots. It
takes time to work through the pain of a major
loss, and to come to the point where we are able
to think more optimistically about our future. We
need to be patient with ourselves at such times,
and grief is often our most appropriate immediate
response.
Yet we also experience many less
severe but still aggravating interruptions that
have the potential to frustrate us more than they
should. Some people are natural optimists, to be
sure, who see a hidden blessing in every curve
ball life throws at them. Yet most of us
instinctively are unsettled by the common
interruptions of life. We view them as nettlesome
at best, and at worst, as ominous signs that God
has turned against us.
It's here that our faith usually
needs to stretch a bit. Interruptions sometimes
truly are serendipities in disguise. Most of us
can benefit from developing greater optimism
about interruptions, and about the possibility
that God will use them to our advantage. A higher
expectation of God's extending help to us through
interruptions not only will keep our blood
pressure down when they occur, but make us more
alert to the ways that he may be working for our
benefit through the unexpected.
The Surprise of His Life
You can't read much Scripture
without finding encouraging examples of God's
giving someone a golden opportunity, or help they
dearly welcomed, through what they initially
perceived to be an unwelcome interruption. One of
the most fascinating of these incidents is the
first story recorded about Saul, Israel's first
king (1 Sam 9:1-10:13).
The donkeys belonging to Saul's
father, Kish, escape, and Kish sends Saul and a
servant to look for them. Saul spends some
considerable time searching for the donkeys,
wandering through the countryside and traveling a
good distance from his home. Finally, his servant
suggests they consult the prophet Samuel, who
lives in a nearby town. As Saul and his servant
are approaching the prophet, God reveals to
Samuel that Saul is his choice to become king of
Israel. Samuel then hosts Saul at a feast and,
following the festivities, explains God's
intentions to him.
What is most interesting about
this incident is that, while God could have
brought Samuel and Saul together, and revealed to
Saul that he wanted him king, through any process
that he wished, he chose to do so through a
classic interruption of life. The story points
profoundly to the fact that interruptions in our
own life which seem annoying and purposeless may
be the entre to remarkable blessings from God.
We're reminded that there may be more to a
setback than meets our eye. We have reason to
stay hopeful when the unexpected occurs.
Weighing Our Response to
Interruptions
While it helps greatly to raise
our expectations about interruptions' bringing us
benefit, we are still left with the challenge of
judging the importance of specific interruptions
that occur. When should we assume that an
interruption deserves our attention, and when is
it best to disregard it?
In some cases the answer is
obvious. We have an emergency on our hands, and
ignoring it isn't an option. When my computer
crashed, I had little choice but to put my
writing on hold and spend the time needed to
remedy the problem. Saul probably faced a true
emergency when his family's donkeys escaped, and
had no choice but to drop everything and look for
them.
Yet many interruptions present us
with a choice--to respond, to say no, or, in some
cases, to delegate the problem to others. The
right response to an interruption isn't always
obvious, and no one rule of thumb works for every
situation. It is, in fact, the unpredictability
of our lives that most throws us back to our
critical need to live by faith and to depend upon
God's guidance.
What Jesus' Example Teaches Us
The example of Jesus himself is
especially helpful in this regard. During his
three-year ministry, Jesus' daily life was
riddled with interruptions. It is fair to say
that his ministry was largely a response to
interruptions. As a personality, Jesus seemed to
thrive on interruptions--much as a physician or
high-energy leader might. Yet he also displayed
uncanny wisdom in handling them.
In many cases Jesus did respond
to them, and the Gospels give numerous examples.
He put an especially high premium on healing
physical and emotional wounds people experienced,
and in the Gospels never turned down anyone's
request for healing, regardless of the intrusion
on his schedule. While he never taught that every
Christian must have this same commitment to
healing, it was a high priority for him
personally.
Yet he did turn down certain
requests for help that were made to him. He
refused to arbitrate a man's dispute with his
brother over their inheritance (Lk 12:13-14), for
instance, and denied a man's request for
permission to travel with him (Lk 8:38-39).
Perhaps the most interesting
example of Jesus' saying no to an interruption
involved a request upon his time that a group of
people made in the early days of his ministry,
described in Mark 1:35-39. His disciples come to
him and tell him that many people from Capernaum,
the town they are visiting, are looking for him.
In this case Jesus has a waiting audience--a
significant opening to teach and heal. Yet he
chooses to turn away from this opportunity and,
instead, to travel to other towns. He replies to
his disciples, "Let us go somewhere else--to
the nearby villages--so that I can preach there
also. That is why I have come" (v. 38).
How was Jesus able to reach this
decision so quickly and confidently, particularly
when it meant walking away from a wide open door
for ministry? Mark gives us an important clue, in
noting that Jesus was praying when his disciples
approached him with this opportunity (v. 35). It
was also early morning, so he was likely praying
about the day before him and establishing his
priorities. Quite possibly, he had already
resolved in prayer that it was time to move on to
new communities. If so, then the offer to stay
and minister in Capernaum was a diversion from
what he had determined God wanted him to do, and
so he had to say no. Even if Jesus hadn't made up
his mind yet to leave Capernaum, Mark obviously
is implying that prayer helped him decide what to
do.
Scripture records another
incident when Jesus resolved his priorities
through prayer, although in this case he decided
to go along with an interruption and accept the
agenda others had for him. Through an intensive
period of prayer in Gethsemane, he determined to
allow Herod's soldiers to capture him and take
him away for crucifixion (Mt 26:36-46).
Taken together, these examples
indicate that through prayer Jesus gained wisdom
and courage to respond decisively to
interruptions--sometimes to say yes, sometimes to
say no.
The Daily Step That Makes a
Difference
These examples from Jesus' life,
and others like them throughout Scripture,
suggest that prayer can play a vital role in
helping each of us better manage and respond to
interruptions in our own life. Most of us will
benefit greatly from having a regular
time--preferably early in the day or late the
night before--when in prayer we establish our
priorities for the day ahead of us.
A good approach is first to ask
God to guide us, then to spend a few minutes
thinking through a schedule for the day. Then we
should commit this schedule to him, asking him to
help us recognize if and when we should deviate
from it to handle interruptions that occur. We
should ask him to give us, as much as possible,
clear reasons for making exceptions to our
schedule. It is just as important to ask him to
guide our instinct-to give us the right
"sense" of what to do--at those moments
when we have to make a quick decision about
responding to an interruption and don't have the
luxury of time to think things through carefully.
While praying in this fashion
won't guarantee that we make no mistakes in
managing our time, it will increase our
confidence about the choices we make, our
alertness to what God wants us to do, and the
likelihood that we will make the right responses
to interruptions. And over time, as we make
praying in this manner a daily priority, we'll
likely find that our judgment about interruptions
improves--to the point that we're better able to
recognize by instinct which ones truly deserve
our attention, and which are simply part of
"the tyranny of the urgent."
We should ask God, too, to
increase our optimism about
interruptions--especially about those that seem
to be setbacks. We should also make a point of
reflecting often on examples--from Scripture, the
lives of others, and our own experience--of cases
when an unwelcome interruption in the end brought
about welcome results. These steps will go a long
way toward helping us develop a more positive
attitude toward interruptions, which in itself
will contribute to our having better judgment
about them.
This past week I received an
e-mail from a woman with some comments about my
article in last month's Nehemiah Notes on
waiting. She notes that for the first time she is
realizing that "Godly anticipation is part
of God's tapestry for building our faith." I
like the way she puts it. Christ desires that
each of us develop Godly anticipation--about
daily life and about our future.
Changing the way we think about
interruptions is a good place to start, for in
them we sometimes encounter the unseen hand of
God.
|
