Those Nasty Interruptions
Theme of the Week: Can You Relate?
Jim Reapsome
Friday, January 10, 2003
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Key Bible Verse: There were so many people coming and going that Jesus. … didn't even have time to eat. (Mark 6:31). Bonus Reading:John 4:4-10, 27-34
A customer interrupted my conversation with the owner of a Christian bookstore in a Middle Eastern country. She didn't have an appointment. She'd just walked in off the street. Never mind that the proprietor and I had some important work to discuss. He didn't usher her out of his private office and hand her off to one of his clerks, but invited her to sit down and brought her a cup of tea. Then he attentively listened to her questions about some books she wanted to buy.
Was that the right way for the manager of a bookstore to use his valuable time? I wondered. Apart from questions of Western managerial concepts and Arab culture, I learned a valuable lesson I should have learned from Jesus. Interruptions never bothered Him. He rarely turned people aside because He had His own agenda to pursue. For Jesus, people came first, not "the work."
What does God have in mind when he sends some one to spoil our well-oiled plans? How liberating it is to junk our plans for the sake of finding His. We must learn to relax and accept the people who ring our doorbells or phone us just when we're in the middle of something either brilliant or relaxing.
—Jim Reapsome in World Pulse
My Response: I could become less agenda-driven by. …
Thought to Apply: Be as patient with others as God has been with you.
—source unknown
Adapted from World Pulse, www.gospelcom.net/bgc/emis (5/24/02) by permission.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
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