interruptions

Interruptions are the worst. Personally, I can’t stand them. If I am working and super focused on something, you can expect to be snapped at if you interupt me. Even if it isn’t work related, if I am in the middle of doing something or going somewhere, I don’t like to be pulled away from that. And I think that most can agree that they react the same way. I don’t believe I am alone in this struggle. And we know that this isn’t good.

I know that as a Christian I am supposed to strive to be more like Christ. And I am the first to admit that I am far far far away from being like Him. I am the biggest sinner I know. But in my longing to be more like Him, I have to study Him and learn from how He reacts to others.

Jesus was interrupted many times that we see, and I would imagine there were other times that are not recorded. I would like to look at two (or three) examples. In Matthew 9 we see it happen twice. In the beginning of the chapter, we can see that He is preaching to the people. In verse 18 it says as He was telling them these things, this to me says that he was not yet done sharing. A man came to Jesus to plead with Him to heal his daughter. (Check out the story in Matthew 9.) And in verse 19, it says Jesus and His disciples got up and followed the man. Jesus could have easily told the man to wait, He was in the middle of something. He could have ignored him altogether. But He didn’t, He quickly got up and followed this man to heal his daughter. Now, in the same chapter, verse 20, a woman approached Him. This story is a little different because she does not actually speak to Him or ask Him to heal her in the beginning. She simply wanted to touch Him. And again, Jesus could have kept moving. He could have ignored her, or even been annoyed that she was touching Him. But instead, He stopped what He was doing. Twice within this chapter Jesus stops what He is doing happily to help and heal others.

There is another time in Matthew that Jesus is interrupted. Matthew 14 really touches me. At the beginning of the chapter, John the Baptist is killed. John was a good friend of Jesus, his cousin. The Bible shows us a picture of a close relationship between the two. So clearly, this death is hard on Jesus. In verse 13, we see that Jesus drew away. He wanted to be alone. This is understandable after the traumatic death of someone you are close with. You want to be alone to mourn. And yet, when Jesus goes somewhere, we know crowds follow Him. He is trying to go away to be alone, and they follow Him. In verse 14, the Bible says that Jesus fills compassion on the crowd. He stays with them, He heals the sick and later in the chapter we know that He feeds them. In a time where all Jesus wanted was to be away, He chose to use that interruption as a blessing.

Jesus continously has patience with those interrupting Him. He constantly stops what He is doing to heal them, love on them. What if we all started doing this? What if we stopped getting so annoyed and started loving on those who interrupt us? I will admit that this is an area of great weakness for me. An area that I need a LOT of work in. But I am working on it. Because I long to be like our Savior, turning interruptions into blessings.