We were recently on a vacation when God interrupted my plans. My
family and I had traveled hundreds of miles to stay at a hotel on the
beach. I had made arrangements to spend one day visiting with friends.
But then, in the middle of the night, the night before my scheduled day
out, one of my kids woke up sick. I spent the whole next day stuck
inside, staring out the hotel window at the long stretch of beach that
was just outside of my reach.
An Interrupted Life
My life is filled with interruptions, inconveniences, frustrations,
and unexpected events. Things break. Accidents happen. The phone rings
just as I climb into bed. Traffic makes me late. Just when we don’t need
another added expense, an appliance breaks. Unexpected illnesses change
my carefully crafted plans. I could go on and on. You probably could
too.
The problem is, I usually handle these interruptions to my life
poorly. I react with frustration and anger. Like a young child, I want
to stomp my feet and say, “It’s not fair!” I blame others for
inconveniencing me. I’ll even throw my own pity-parties.
Though these interruptions are unexpected and catch me off guard,
they do not catch God off guard. They are not random, meaningless
events. In fact, these interruptions are divinely placed in my path for a
reason. God uses these interruptions to change me to be more like
Christ.
Slow traffic, a sick child, or a costly home repair may not seem like
important tools in our sanctification, but they are. We often overlook
these interruptions and inconveniences and instead expect God to work in
our lives through huge life-changing circumstances. But the reality is,
we won’t often have major events in our life that cause us to trust God
and obey him in some deeply profound way. We won’t be called to build
an ark or take an only child up Mt. Moriah. Rather, it’s in these small
frustrations and interruptions, the little things in our life, where we
are given opportunities to rely on God, to obey him, and bring him
glory.
Paul Tripp puts it like this:
You and I don’t live in a series of big, dramatic moments. We don’t careen from big decision to big decision. We all live in an endless series of little moments. The character of a life isn’t set in ten big moments. The character of a life is set in ten thousand little moments of everyday life. It’s the themes of struggles that emerge from those little moments that reveal what’s really going on in our hearts. (Whiter Than Snow, 21)
Interruptions of Grace
These ten thousand little moments come in the form of our children
asking us to play a game with them when we are tied up with something
else. They are moments like when we get stuck behind a school bus when
we’re already late to an appointment, or when we have a flat tire on the
way to work. They are in all those moments all throughout the day when
things don’t go our way, our plans fail, and our life is interrupted.
It’s these moments where the rubber meets the road — where our faith
is stretched and we look down to see whether we are standing on rock or
sand. Do we really believe that God is in control of all the details of
our life? Do we really believe that his grace is sufficient to get us
through the day? Do we really believe that the gospel of Christ is
powerful enough to not only save us for eternity but also to sustain and
strengthen us in the midst of life’s interruptions? Do we really
believe that Christ is enough to satisfy all the deepest needs of our
heart?
These interruptions are acts of God’s grace. They force us to work
through these questions. They make us face our sin. They are God’s way
of taking off our blinders and making us see that we need the gospel in
every moment of the day. They are a light that shines on the darkest
recesses of our heart, revealing the truth of what’s really there — the
sins and idols that we’ve pushed off into the corner, thinking that if
we can’t see them, they must not exist.
The Reminder We Need
These interruptions remind us that we don’t have life figured out and
that we can’t do it on our own. They are like the Shepherd’s rod,
pulling us back from our wandering ways, back to our Great Shepherd. We need
these interruptions. Like nothing else, they push us to the cross of
Christ where we must remember the gospel and receive his grace and
forgiveness.
It’s hard to see all the little frustrating events and interruptions
in our day as divinely placed opportunities to grow in grace, but they
are. And seeing them as such helps us take our eyes off ourselves and
put them on Christ, who cares more about our transformation than about
our daily comfort. Rather than giving us a life of ease, he interrupts
our lives with grace and shows us what we need most of all — himself.
How about you? Is your life filled with interruptions? Do you see God’s hand at work in them?
Written By: Christina Fox
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