A dear brother named Tim Boden dropped a nugget, and like a pebble in a pond, from then to now it sent ripples through my heart.
He asked a simple question,
“Was Jesus ever interrupted?”
I was driving to address a network outage when I received a text saying that the affected business was back up and there was no longer any need to come out.
I had already driven about an hour and my knee jerk reaction was frustration about the waste of time.
And at that very moment, Brother Boden’s comment returned to me, riding the wave of the ripples his question caused so many months ago.
I thought of Jesus who was requested urgently to heal the daughter of a man named Jairus who was at the brink of death. On the way, He was, from our perspective, unexpectedly delayed by a woman who couldn’t stop bleeding (Luke 8:41-56).
It wasn’t an interruption for Jesus because He is Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14) which means “God with us”. To be God with us was the very thing He was here to do.
That revealed to me that like my Elder Brother Jesus, when I’m with God, nothing is a waste of time.
When we operate as His children (walking in the Spirit), God is either preparing us or using us, very often without us even being conscious of it. Just by being available, He “diffuses through us the fragrance of His knowledge in every place”
-2 Corinthians 2:14.
Furthermore, when we’re on His program, He supplies what’s needed (versus the needless anxieties we create by our own selfish pursuits). He provides the resources and opportunities, as well as an awareness of His provision because, like Him, we’re keen to make the best of every occasion.
There is such great freedom in simply seeking to be with God and trusting Him with the rest, trusting Him to “redeem the time” as my dear brother Bobby Craig says, trusting Him to provide, trusting Him to make the best use of everything we do –even the most seemingly mundane of tasks and I can have full confidence that when I’m with Him, absolutely nothing is wasted.
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
-1 Corinthians 15:58