4/13/2022 0 Comments Don't miss thisI am a Christian. Because of that, this is a big week in my life. This Holy Week leading up to Easter is a week of big sorrow and big gratitude.
It is a week of big reflection. I listened to a message in church this past Sunday. The pastor recounted with great passion dozens of miracles Jesus worked when he was on earth. His passion drove home a point: Jesus didn't come to interrupt lives; he came to disrupt them. I looked up the definitions of those words. Generally speaking, an interruption brings about a pause in the flow of things. A disruption brings about a change of course - often a radical change of course. This week, the story of Jesus represents the chance to have your life disrupted in a most beautiful way - even if through the most tragic of circumstances. The pastor knows that. Which is why he said, "don't miss this." When he said those words, I found myself immediately reflecting on the day Jesus disrupted my life. A few years into one of the darkest periods of my life - in my mid-twenties - when everyone around me knew I was living in rock bottom but still bouncing around trying to make a trampoline out of it, I went to work for a carpenter. This carpenter built large houses; I hauled large loads of lumber and shingles around on my back all day to make building houses a little easier. That carpenter was always smiling. He was possibly the biggest smiler I had ever met. I assumed it was because I was carrying dry wall and he wasn't. Turns out there was more to it than that. You see, I wasn't fond of how happy he was. Most days I showed up to work hung over and broke, which made grunt work miserable work. I'm not 100% sure misery loves company, but it despises being within a thousand miles of joy. One day there were a few of us sitting against the two by fours of an unfinished wall inside the frame of a house we were working on, eating lunch. I was devouring a bag of chips and a 3 day old sandwich I bought at the 7-11 in town as I raced to make it to work on time that morning. I don't remember what the carpenter was eating, only that it must have been fresher than my lunch, because he joked and laughed while he ate. That was the day I couldn't take it any more. So I asked him a question that would change my life. I asked the carpenter, not really intending that he bear the brunt of my frustration with God, but he was the ever present happy one after all. I confronted him - why are you always so happy? For a question that represented so many complications in my own life, his answer flowed from a disrupting place of simplicity and calm. He said, "My happiness comes from my relationship with God." I knew people who were pretty caught up in their bibles. They loved quoting verses to the rock bottom guys like me. Like that would somehow float me to the top. But I'd never heard anyone talk about a relationship with God. That sounded thumpier than anything I'd ever heard out of the thumpiest of bible thumpers. Relationships were between people, not between people and an invisible creator of the world. In the days ahead, I tried hard to shake his claim. It wouldn't disappear as fast as some of the scriptures I'd heard and since forgotten. I became obsessed with finding a more logical reason for his persistent joy. I thought maybe his sobriety was to blame, but I'd met a lot of grumpy sober people in my life. Over the weeks and months ahead, I began to ask him a little more about this relationship he had. Interrogate might be more appropriate. As he described it to me, I came to realize that his relationship with God was as real to him as any other in his life, and I had witnessed firsthand how much he loved the real people in his life. To him, his relationship with God was more powerful than all others combined. Today, I know it was no accident I crossed paths with the carpenter at the most desperate time of my life, because suddenly I wanted some of what he had. There was an unheard whisper that day. It said, "don't miss this." I am beyond grateful I didn't miss it. I'm grateful I didn't miss the greatest disruption of my life. Because I know today that encounter not only DISRUPTED my life - but in far more than an eternal sense - it SAVED my life. I'm pretty sure I haven't lived with as many smiles as that carpenter since Jesus became the most important relationship in my life. I'm a work in progress. But I've never again had to wonder where true happiness and joy and contentment are found. Maybe this week you find yourself wondering where those things are found. Maybe this week there is an unheard whisper happening in your life. Maybe it is saying, "don't miss this." Well, I used to hear "don't miss this" as a threat. Miss it and you'll go to hell. Today, I know "don't miss this" became the most beautiful invitation I was ever offered. In accepting it, I didn't avoid hell. In accepting it, I found a way to climb out of it. Don't miss this. It truly is an invitation.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
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