Monday, April 13, 2009
today I stopped...
Ever notice how when you are at your busiest moment of the day, somebody was created just to interrupt you in mid-stride? Or when you are actually finding a minute of extreme productivity in whatever the task may be, the cell phone rings. And it's your wife. What do you do? Let it roll to voicemail? What if it is an emergency? What if she is just calling to tell you how much she loves you and that you are the most wonderful man in the world... I mean you want to catch that call for sure.
But what about those other people. The drains on social society. We all have them in our life and if you don't just call me... I'll share. You know the type... those who when you see them coming you quickly act like you are getting a call. Those people were created to step in the midst of your already stormy day and add more calamity not calmness. I wonder if God in all of His infinite wisdom doesn't just send some of those people to intersect your hectic and possibly meaningless day? I mean what if He sees that we need to slow down, take a deep breath and remember what we were created for? After all, aren't we supposed to love others in the same manner as we love ourselves?
Well, today I stopped. I was briskly making my way from one appointment to another when I walked past a lady I did not know at all standing at the bus stop. I spoke and actually was intentional to make eye contact with her so that she knew I really wondered (even if for but a brief moment) how she was really doing. She spoke back as if she felt that I really was interested. The next thing I know I am hearing all about how great and wonderful God has been to her. She starts by telling me how her pastor carried a wooden cross made from a real tree that he had harvested all by himself into church on Easter Sunday morning. I kind of laughed it off and thought how ridiculous that idea was. In fact, do something original... that carrying the cross thing has been played out for hundreds of years. Then it hit me. She wasn't talking to me, she was talking at me. She had a message that I needed to hear. Maybe in my self-righteous little life I may have missed the beauty of Easter yesterday. She was my reminder. She went on to tell me all about her son who was severely handicapped had just turned 18 and the doctors had told her years earlier that he wouldn't live past 5. She poured out the miracles that God had performed in her own life and all I could do was think that she was sent into my life by my Heavenly Father today, not to slow me down, but rather to stop me cold in my tracks.
She got it. She had experienced first hand the beauty of the resurrection and she was sharing it with me whether I wanted to hear it or not. Her bus came and she scurried off to make it home I guess and I was left to deal with what remained. Me, standing there. A man who truly wants to please God in every aspect of my life. A man who wants to give more than he takes. A man who strives daily to take life by the horns and ride each moment for everything that is in it. And all I could do was stop.
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