Godly Disruptions of a Predictable Routine
I had not penciled in several hours of snow shoveling on my weekly calendar. I had not expected to be searching the shelves in the garage, flashlight in hand, for that old backpacking stove after the power went out late Wednesday afternoon. I didn’t know that Faith Acts would be canceled. But neither had I expected a Tuesday afternoon invitation for an early Wednesday morning walk through snowy Langhorne and the wonderful conversation and prayer I’d share with the faithful friend who invited me. I hadn’t thought of Scrabble by candlelight the night the power went off, but Becky did and it was great (Becky won – she played her Q more shrewdly than I played my Z). I could not have imagined the beauty of the snowy landscape under bright blue skies yesterday and today.
The third blizzard of the century this winter disrupted a lot of the things I had planned on or assumed that I would be doing. All in all, it was a pretty good disruption.
God, blizzard-like, loves to disrupt our predictable routines and our best-laid plans. Earthquakes, hurricanes, famines and drought strike people in places we’ve never heard of and suddenly we’re called to prayer and generous giving we had not anticipated. Friends call at unseemly hours with pain or sorrow in their voices, and we know that whatever else we planned to do must be set aside in order to listen, pray, listen some more and then share a word from Scripture or Spirit-given solace.
We hadn’t planned on it, but a friend invites us to a Bible study, a time or prayer or just a fellowship gathering and that Spirit that blows like a wind reminds us that what we had thought we’d be doing with that time wasn’t all that important after all.
We never thought we would sing in the choir or teach in the Sunday School. Never imagined that God would call us to join a mission team traveling in Christ’s name to a country we’d otherwise never visit. Me a deacon or an elder? Never say never when you're in relationship with the God with whom all things are possible.
That disruptive God of ours simply asks that we always use a pencil with a good eraser when we begin to plan and organize our time. Most often our appointments and meetings will take place just as predicted. But every so often the Spirit begins to blow in a new direction, sometimes even a blizzard of change, and we better be ready to be disrupted.
It’s something like this. We can be open to God’s disruptions, even shoveling snow, or we can spin our wheels in the slush of our carefully organized lives getting nowhere. I’ll take the godly disruption.
By the way, did you know if you spelled “quizzed” on a triple world score, using all seven of your letters (including the blank as your second Z), you’d get 158 points? I’m hoping for the day.