Interruptions!

Interruptions!

Had any lately?

Any pollsters hit you up for an opinion lately? Doesn’t it annoy you when they chatter on completely oblivious to the Toddler you’re frantically reaching for as she skips, laughing into traffic?

Has someone “Homeless” come up to your car as you waited impatiently for the red light to turn green? That whimpering stare. What are you feeling as you labor to ignore it? Violated? Irritated? Guilty? You did, after all, give to people like this through the Church. Didn’t you? There “ought to be a law,” don’t you think?

One of my colleagues, during the years I worked with students, had a Poster in his room. The text on it was, “People are never an interruption but my reason for being here.” I wish I could say, truthfully, that I wholeheartedly believed that. But not even my “youthful idealism” could override my skepticism. Kids, be they our own Toddlers, or someone else’s Teenager, have a knack for picking the “wrong time.” My life was full of both those days.

Jesus lived the Motto on that Poster!

We see how truly He lived it early in our Journey with Him. Remember He’s on His way to the Summit of His Mission; to “give away his life in exchange for the many who are held hostage,” – bound helplessly, hopelessly by an inescapable web of wrong choices. There’s a “huge crowd” following Him. If ever a man had most important things on His mind, Jesus does now. Just then; at the most inopportune of all inconvenient times, “Suddenly,” Matthew writes, “they came upon two blind men sitting alongside the road. When they heard it was Jesus passing they cried out, ‘Master, have mercy! Mercy, Son of David!” The crowd following were increasingly convinced this man could change their circumstances and liberate them. They saw these cries for help as a complete disregard for His importance; an interruption. They “tried to hush them up, but they got all the louder, crying, “Master, have mercy on us! Mercy Son of David!”

What would Jesus do? Would He leave them to His self-appointed handlers?

NO!

“He came to serve; not be served … .”

He “stopped.” He “called over” to these blind beggars acknowledging their importance amidst the plethora of importance surrounding Him. “What do you want from me?” He asked.

They called back. “Master, we want our eyes opened. We want to see1”

What Matthew tells us next profoundly reveals the heart of Jesus. He was, “deeply moved.” Despite the mob. Deeper than His own personal pathos, Jesus heart was gripped by the cries of two men begging for help. He “touched their eyes. They had their sight back that very instant, and joined the procession.”

The Master Teacher has just taught us, in practice, that “people are not interruptions.” They are “our reason for being here.”

Treated compassionately; with heart-strengthening attention; with Grace, these men “joined the procession.” They “followed” Jesus. They became “Christ-followers.”

This is “our reason for being here.”

This is His final Commission for us. “Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you.” “(T)rain … them to live as I’ve lived and taught … to follow me.” (Matthew 28: 18 – 20)

Here, on the way out of Jericho, He’s shown us a way to get it done. Consider life’s “interruptions.” Wait! Surrender your emotional turmoil. Let your own pathos be overwhelmed by a the heart-gripping compassion of Christ Himself. Could this be a moment of opportunity? Could this be someone who, with a little help, might be compelled to “join the procession.”? Seize this moment. Invite them to join you and Jesus on this Journey to the cross, through the empty tomb, to that “everlasting” Life which He alone can give us.

Follow Him together and learn how Eternity uses Time’s interruptions.