Interruptions!

The Service was going well, it was worship together for the whole church community so people of all ages were taking part.  After a while a person walked slowly to the front and asked if he could say a word.  The leader spoke rather harshly - "if you're quick about it!" - and most of the congregation thought this was another planned item in the worship.  The person spoke briefly and unfurled a banner ..... before being escorted from the church.  It was the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury and most of the city's churches were visited by demonstrators that Sunday!

Interruptions can be a threat or an opportunity.  Our reaction may be to weave them into whatever else is happening, or it may have to be confrontational.  A quick thinking speaker can comment creatively on the sound a mobile phone that someone has forgotten to silence, while another person may just glare angrily at such an interruption.  A van driver can react with patience to the learner who turns cuts across the road and forces an emergency stop or the encounter can result in extreme road rage!

Henri Nouwen writes in "Beyond the Mirror" -

"It has been the interruptions to everyday life which have most revealed the divine mystery of which I am a part,"

"all these interruptions presented themselves as opportunities to go beyond the normal patterns of daily life and find deeper connections than the previous safety of my physical, emotional and spiritual well being."

It is interruptions that reveal our priorities, test our resources and stretch our faith.  So often our security is in things - money, people, in roles and relationships, physical comfort or in power over others.  But God not security is the purpose of our life's journey.

Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman who died in Auschwitz.  She called her diaries "An Interrupted Life".  Addressing this question of our security, she writes -

"there is really a deep well inside me, and in it, dwells God. Sometimes I am there too. But more often stones and grit block the well and God is buried beneath, then he must be dug out again."

Interruptions in our life provide an opportunity or the challenge that we need to rediscover God as our security.  They are moments when we realise that God is saying something new, taking something away, giving us something different.