As a man who is easily taken “out of the zone,” interruptions are something I find difficult to appreciate. Said more honestly, it is hard for me not to disdain them.

However, since I live in God’s world under Christ’s rule, I understand that my scorn for interruptions is not OK. Even the idea of interruptions is suspect when I live at the pleasure of another who is Sovereign over all. God has created me in Jesus Christ to do the good works He has prepared for me to do, not necessarily the ones I have planned to do (Ephesians 2:10). The Lord will interrupt my self-made plans with His own. I need to learn and love that truth. I not only need to pray, “Thy will be done,” but I also must practice it when His holy interruptions come my way.

I appreciate, therefore, the needed exhortation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions. We may pass them by, preoccupied with our more important tasks. . . . It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this, but actually they are disdaining God’s “crooked yet straight path.” (Taken from Life Together)

Pressing the point further, I appreciate Joseph Tenney’s words:

Interruption is God’s invitation. God is inviting us to see him all around us, in the lives of others, in our conversations, in our serving those in need. Interruption is not simply a matter of our heart developing patience; it’s about experiencing true life. It is one of God’s ways of waking us up to what’s around us to see there’s more to be done than our self-appointed tasks for the day, as important as they may seem.

And therefore, my plans must always be loose in my mind. If God has different plans for me than what I had previously planned, I must remember, again and again, that I am His and I live for His pleasure and service. Interruptions are simply God letting me in on what He had planned all along. They are not taking me away from my work, but inviting me to it.

Read the whole post on interruption from Tenney here.