Dealing with Interruptions

Fall is officially here! I’m really enjoying the beautiful weather here in Maryland. It’s a balmy seventy-two degrees today. The windows are open and the kids are playing outside. It’s truly my favorite time of year.

The fall season also brings a new routine of church meetings, school, sports and the like. But the past week my routine hasn’t gone as planned. I’ve had many unexpected interruptions that have hindered me from completing my normal daily tasks. It seems that every time I turn around there’s something else for me to do that I haven’t planned for—and I want life to stop for just half an hour so I can get my laundry done!

But, as my mom reminded me the other day, God is more concerned with my heart than my laundry. She reminded me of a quote by C.S. Lewis that gave me a biblical perspective on interruptions:

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life.  The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.  This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it’s hard to remember it all the time.” The Quotable Lewis, (Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, 1989), 335.

It is hard to remember! But what a difference it makes when I view interruptions not as hindrances to my routine but as “sovereign deliveries” from God, part of his good plan for my day. Then, and only then, can I truly receive them with joy.

“This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24