Importance of Interruptions

I read a book excerpt this week in Christianity Today magazine that I found very profound. It was titled Schedule, Interrupted -- Discovering God's time-management technique and was from the book The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan.

It opens with Ps. 90.12 ... "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom," Moses asked God.

So, a heart of wisdom comes from learning how to number our days aright. Fortunately, as Buchanan points out, we don't have to be wise to register for classes at God's school, we just have to be "diligent, attentive, and inquisitive in his classes" and we'll emerge with wisdom.
Buchanan writes, "God's school is not like most. It's not regimented, age-adjusted, fixed in its curriculum. The classroom is life itself; the curriculum, all of life's demands and interruptions in tedium, its surprises and disappointments. In the midst of this, through these things themselves, God hands us an abacus and tells us to tally it all up.
Meaning?
Meaning, work out where time and eternity meet. Pay attention to how God is a foot in the mystery of each moment and its mad rush or maddening plod. He is present in both. But too often, we are so time-obsessed that we take no time to really notice,"

Buchanan goes on to describe how Jesus lived while here. Outside of Jesus' main purpose of making it to Jerusalem and dying for our sins, his life was full of "zigzags and detours." He bounced from one interruption to another with no clear plan...

"Jesus was available--or not-- according to some oblique logic all His own. He had an inner ear for the Father's whispers, a third eye for the Spirit's motions. One minute He's not going to the temple, the next He is. One minute He refuses to help a wedding host solve his wine drought, the next he's all over it. He's ready to drop everything and rush over to a complete stranger's house to heal his servant, but dawdles for days while Lazarus--'the one He loves'-- writhes in his death throes (John 11:3), or fails to come at all when John the Baptist--'the greatest in the kingdom of heaven'-- languishes on death row (Matt 11:1-11)."

The author references John 3:8 which says, "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

So, Jesus went around "doing good" (Acts 10:38) without, it seems, a care for the immediate time. However, he paid attention. He noticed people's needs.

I really don't do this excerpt justice, but I hope you're catching the point here. I like the question Buchanan asks,

"Of all the events that have shaped you most lastingly, how many did you engineer, manufacture, chase down? And how many were interruptions?"

Buchanan is right, most of us become so consumed with time, we lose our purpose. We often live afraid that time is soon to run out. "But you and I, we're heirs of eternity. We're not short of days. We just need to number them aright."

Praise God for making life a classroom with surprises and interruptions. I pray that I can begin to pay attention and number the days aright!