interruptions

It's strange how you sometimes get an inkling, at the start of a brand new week, of the way the week's going to go.

I think I just did today!

First thing up, I was along again at the local secondary school. Holy Week assemblies. This time with the S4 pupils.

I don't get long at the best of times and I have to work hard at holding their attention.

Today was worse than ever. I'd hardly started before the door to the hall was opened and in trooped simply masses of the pupils. Late.

This doesn't normally happen, I have to say.

Not their being late, because there are always loads of them late. But their trooping in like that.

Usually once the door is closed, that's it. If you're late, you wait.

But not today. My flow was rapidly stemmed. Before I'd even got into it much at all.

So once this new batch of pupils were all of them safely installed, I took up where I'd got to just before. Which was pretty much like my starting again.

Not long into my talk this time and the tannoy starts to blare. I had to stop. Again.

A whole long list of pupils who should report to someone somewhere at a certain point in time. None of them S4 pupils, I observed.

This also doesn't happen. Not usually anyway. In almost twenty years there at the school that's simply never happened. Not once. (Of course they haven't had the tannoy all that time, I appreciate).

It felt like a conspiracy!

Start again. Or pick up where I thought I'd had to stop.

And then, before I'd got much further on, the bell begins to toll. Five rings. The 'time-up' signal which felt like a boxer must feel when the ref starts to count him out.

My theme to the pupils had broadly been that time is probably our most valuable possession of all. By the end of the talk (if you could call it that rather than a round of staccato sentences), I was thinking I couldn't agree more.

Interruptions. There are days like that. Weeks like that.

This, I think, is one of them.

I simply need to adapt. All sorts of things unexpectedly come along. Require attention. Involve a whole re-jigging of my plans.

It's sometimes - as it was at the school this morning - really quite frustrating. It doesn't feel like much, if anything at all, gets done. It's all just very 'bitty' and it seems so incomplete.

But such, I guess, is the story of the world in which we live.

God's purposes so often interrupted by our waywardness and thoughtlessness and things we think important but which have, in fact, no lasting sort of relevance at all.

I guess he, too, must end up quite frustrated by the way we live our lives. Not that he shows it. He's really pretty patient when I think of it!

Interruptions. I won't bore you with the details.

But I started to think that maybe it's all about perspective. Those things I view as 'interruptions' could equally be viewed as something else.

Surprising opportunities which come my way to demonstrate the grace of God to others in their need.

Maybe that's how God himself regards our constant thwarting of his purposes and plans. The thoughtless 'interruptions' of our waywardness and sin.

Maybe the Lord simply sees them all as further opportunities to demonstrate his grace. Maybe that's why he takes them all in his stride.

After all, looking back on the day, the things I'd planned to do, I did in fact get done. Just.

The SU group which meets over lunch at the school.

A lengthy lunchtime meeting with a view to a day we're planning on holding in June. 'Lunch', you can see, is a term I'm using lightly to cover a whole long time of the day!

Preparing the message the service tomorrow involves.

Another evening meeting with some leaders here - and a bit of preparation that required.

And a week already full, getting fuller by the moment with another person dying and another funeral service to be worked at and prepared for through this week.

I reckon that's now some ten different bits bits of preparation (as in messages to give) that I've to do. And that's before I even think about the coming Sunday services!

Interruptions? No, not really.

More a case of unexpected, brilliant opportunities, togged up in fancy dress!