Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you is humming through my head. It’s a good thing I am not at work, the family is not around, and that the dogs don’t care–cuz I can’t carry a tune in a bucket as my Southern family would tell me. But that song is placed on my heart this morning for a reason and I trust it for this blog.
I am in the last decade of my employment years. I use the word, employ since I believe I am to work until the Lord calls me home. My grandmother’s work ethic shaped me well.
I am 60. I read a recent article on Facebook: A study from the New England Journal of Medicine (2018) found that the most productive age in a person’s life is 60-70. The second most productive age is between 70 and 80 and the third most productive decade is 50 to 60. The average age of a Nobel Prize winner is 62.
I have a few years to work on my Nobel prize but I digress.
I can plan out my legacy with my grands, spend time with my adult children, take special trips with Big Bob and train a successor at work. I can order my seeds for the spring (and I have) and plan for annoying foot surgery on the horizon (I will) and save for retirement (yuck). I can prepare accreditation documents for the future of my school; I can—–You get the picture.
What does kingdom work look like for me? The same as it did when I was 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 and 70.
What is God’s plan for my future? I can spout all the religiosity I know and make it sound great. I truly believe HE has ordered my steps and Yes, I am going to say it, numbered my days.
Then a quiet voice, ok sometimes a slap upside my head awakens me to the kingdom work HE set aside for me.
HE is going to send me some interruptions to my plans.
INTERRUPTIONS, yes interruptions.
C.S. Lewis wrote, “The great thing if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life–the life God is sending one day by day” what one calls one’s ‘real life’ is a phantom of one’s own imagination.”
The interruptions to my plans are what GOD sends me to do. Interruptions are part of God’s plan. HE works through them. HE has chased man since the Garden interrupting man’s plans to bring all of HIS children home.
But HIS plan was never interrupted for us. Bringing us home.
A knock on the office door, a conversation in the stands, a late text, a social media post of an acquaintance that weighs on my heart, a child sent to me for discipline, a reward for a reading incentive—-prayers for friends.
As I type this, I have a dear friend on the vent for COVID, numerous friends too familiar with the halls of MD Anderson, the unexpected death of a friend, and pain for my hurting teens at school. Your list is there too.
“I can” will be and should be replaced with “Let me stop what I am doing and serve.”
It’s not always easy; I am a planner and a workaholic. I make list upon list upon list and feel satisfaction crossing out the list. I am that person who writes something down I just did to be able to mark it off to feel success.
I have been home with Omicron for five days. I am doing well with this mild variant. Our school is on modified-virtual for the time being. It’s annoying and disrupting and hard. My teachers are exhausted.
The frustration is just below the surface and yet, what is GOD doing with all of these interruptions?
We just may never know this side of heaven or at all?
The shutdown of 2020 had many negative effects that we are still feeling today but I am amazed at the stories I hear of busy family’s reconnecting by the quarantine. I believe the tenor of their lives changed for the better.
I prayed all last week to make it to Thursday healthy so I could keep a doctor’s appointment in Little Rock about my foot. It had taken me months to get the appointment and I didn’t want to miss it. The ligament surgeon is booked for months.
I got a God moment. The MRI was the last test of the afternoon and as I walked to the car, I told Bob the sounds despite the earplugs really had given me a headache. I took an Advil and slept the three hours home. I awoke to fever and Omicron in bloom. I teared up and said, “Thank you, Lord, you heard my plea.” I awoke with chills and a high temperature during the night. “But even if I had missed the appointment, HIS time was perfect.”
Scripture already told us thousands of years ago and I memorized it—but can I live it out?
We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps Proverbs 16:9
And our steps are fraught with interruptions.
Maranatha! Go find the person put in your life today to serve! Jayme
