How would you
react if the Queen of England crashed your wedding?
That sounds
sort of stupid, unless you are Manchester’s John or Frances Canning and then it
is a valid question.
Like many
couples, John and Frances planned their wedding to be a small, quiet, civil
ceremony. As it turns out, the Queen and
Prince Philip were having lunch in the same building that day and they decided
to drop in on the unsuspecting bride and groom.
“It was
bizarre! She knew our names!” Frances
said. “I am definitely going to have to
go buy more photo albums than I expected”.
When the
Queen drops in, everything changes.
Did you
know that this sort of thing is not completely unprecedented? In fact, God does it all the time. Many times, we see God dropping in and “interrupting”
the normal, calculated lives that people had planned out. People like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Mary and
Paul would be good examples of this. You
can also add “Manoah” to that list.
Manoah
thought he knew how his life was going to go.
At one time, he and his wife had planned on having a big family, but
that dream was long gone. In fact, their
hopes had been so crushed that when we are introduced to his wife we are not
given her name, but rather a description:
“she was barren and childless”. However,
God interrupts their life by sending an angel to announce to them that not only
were they to have a child, but that he would be special and do great things for
God. Eventually, this prophecy came true
and, when the boy was born, they named him “Samson” and the rest, as they say,
is history (See Judges 13 for the full story).
The
point: When God drops into our lives,
everything changes.
The good
news: He is still trying to drop in and interrupt
our plans. God is still trying to get
our attention so that he can do his work in our lives. How? Well,
maybe there is a passage of scripture that you keep thinking about. Maybe your circumstances have changed and it
has caused you to think about things you have never thought of before. Maybe something inside of you keeps nagging and
saying, “You should … (fill in the blank)”.
The key is to pay attention. We
often see interruptions as problems, but God can use them as opportunities.
Easter is a
good time to remember that God likes to interrupt our world for the good.
“For God so
loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
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