Innterruption

The Birth of Jesus -Luke 2
At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. 2 (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. 4 And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. 5 He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was now obviously pregnant.
6 And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. 7 She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
During this particular time of the year, we tend to rant and complain about how busy we are. I am convinced that is just not this time of year. Being and keeping busy is just a state of mind. But this time of year seems to create more stress than any other time of year and we tend to get more stressed out.
When we are stressed out making room for Jesus just doesn’t make sense. We spend a lot of time preparing for the party but we forget to show up. We tend to forget that we are the reason for the season. We are the reason He came to earth. We are the reason we celebrate  Christmas every year but we better not forget to show up for the party. We need this one month of emphasis every year to remind us the Jesus really did come.
How would like to take the stress out of the holiday season? On the Today show there was a New York City psychotherapist telling us how to “take the stress out of the holiday season.”

Suggestion one: Have realistic Expectations
We all have fantasies about how the holiday should be, don’t we? We are romantics at heart. We want this to be a high-mark time for everybody involved. The family, such as it is, comes back together for this intense time. What we forget is that our memories of Christmases past tend to be sanitized by time. What we remember are the warm fuzzies of family togetherness. We have edited out stress, conflicts, ongoing clashes of personality and varied expectations of all who are part of the holiday mix.
Suggestion two: Avoid Perfectionism
In other words, don’t forget not everything needs to be perfect. EnJOY the season. If you think about it we tend to get stressed out over the silliest of things. This season was meant to celebrate. As Christ followers we need to get better at celebrating. We need to get better at enjoying life.
What are some of the silly things we get stressed over? (make some mental notes of the silly little things that  you stress over)
Suggestion Three: Limit Family time
Thank God for families. I love getting together with them but we don’t have to spend every single moment together. We all bring our varied psychological stuff to the holidays, don’t we? Put us all in a room together for a prolonged period of time, and that stuff will begin to leak out around the edges. We all have the annoying person in our family. We all have that one family member we wonder about. We all have had family members who have hurt us intentionally and unintentionally.
Suggestion 4: Encourage creative traditions
We all have them. They are good. And they can change, modify and even grow over a period of years.My family growing up used to have family communion together and then go to Pearl Snyder’s house. I like going to Pearl’s house after church on Christmas Eve because she always bought us a present. Traditions give you something to look forward or at least roll your eyes at and complain about.
Suggestion 5: Avoid over indulgence
Too much food. Too much alcohol. Too many parties. Too much gift buying. All of these can ruin the holiday season. After this season is over, you will pay for it all some way or another.

Suggestion 6 (this is mine): Make room for God “innterruptions.”

For a guy we don’t know if he actually exists he gets a pretty bum – wrap. The Bible doesn’t mention him but tradition and Christmas folklore talks a lot about the “poor innkeeper” who told Mary and Joseph there was no room for them in the inn.

There were a couple of types of inns. In Luke 10 you have the story of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan dropped him off at the “pan-dokh-i-on” and gave him two silver coins which in US dollars is equivalent to $250 and told him to take care of the man. This was more like a motel or a place of lodging. The Inn in Luke 2 is a “kat-al-oo-mah”. The word literally means “the breaking up of a journey.” Often in ancient Israel the journey between two towns would take longer than a day, so ancient “KOI’s” (Kampground of Israel) developed beside the roads. Since Bethlehem was a small village less than five miles from Jerusalem there probably was no need for a [pandokhion – motel or lodging place] but there might be a need for a [kataloomah]. More than likely the inn was just a stopover for caravans on their way through Jerusalem to Galilee or Egypt.The nicer of these kataloomah type inns would be two-story structures where the overnight guests would sleep on the upper level while their animals rested underneath in the “ancient parking lot”. The not so nice inns were simply crude stone walls encircling an area for animals. These types of inns did not always have an innkeeper because mainly animals stayed in there.

My thinking is (thinking like a man) is that Joseph tried for a “pandokhion” and ended up in a crude stone wall encircled with animals.

Mary and Joseph were under a lot of stress but they still

• Were obedient when being obedient didn’t make any sense.
• Listened for God’s direction
• Chose to do the right thing
• Chose to be servants even though it didn’t make much sense to them. Besides Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph were the only ones who knew about God’s plan.

Even though there wasn’t any room for them to stay, they made room for these things to happen in their life. They trusted God’s direction even when there wasn’t a place for them to rest. You would think God would have least given them a place to stay to have a baby.

I am certain that they both had large amounts of  stress in their life. When you make a change in your life there is stress. I am certain that the way they had the changes planned out it would have went a lot smoother. God interrupts the rhythm of their life and then completely abandons them – NO HE DIDN’T ABANDON them. God interrupts the rhythm of their life. They listened. They served even though there was no place for them to stay after a 70 mile donkey ride. No place for them to have the baby. Things probably didn’t go the way they had it planned in their head but God was with them through the whole process.

The stress in our life convinces us that we don’t have room for anything or anyone else in our life. The rhythm of our life and the stress levels it creates causes us to believe that we can’t do just one more thing. We certainly don’t have time for God to interrupt the rhythm of our life. That is really a stress that we don’t want to deal with on top of the other silly little things we stress over.

Like Mary and Joseph, We need to make room for God to interrupt the rhythm of our life.

He would interrupt the rhythm of our day. If we let him. We do this by spending time with him. I am not talking about reading scripture, praying, listening to music, or enjoying his creation. Those things are just tools to help you accomplish that. I am talking about intentionally being aware of His presence. We don’t do this because it doesn’t make sense to. Why would we give 5,10, 15 minutes or even an hour of our day thinking, reflecting, or even wondering about God?
He would interrupt the rhythm of our life once a week. If we would let him. We meet together to worship and to be encouraged and challenged to live for Him through the week. Even this doesn’t make sense anymore to do. Spending time with other believers and worshipping has just become another activity to go to and not an opportunity for God to interrupt your life. When you work all week, get involved in various others things we just don’t have time for this kind of interruption.
He would interrupt the rhythm of our life for the whole month of December. If we would let him.
Then there are those surprise interruptions. God would interrupt  our rhythm our lives then if we would let him.

What keeps us from letting God interrupt our life? The stuff we stress out about.

Usually these surprising interruptions come at the most stressful time in our life. God doesn’t create the  stress. We are the ones who create the stress. When those stress levels get to a certain point. Caboom! Things explode! We emotionally, mentally, and spiritually breakdown.
Our stresses convince us we don’t have time God interruptions. We say things this like “this shouldn’t be happening to me now!” Or “This is really bad timing right now.” Or “I don’t have time for this right now!”

• Stress causes us to lose perspective on life.
• Stress causes us to do things we wouldn’t normally do.
• Stress causes heart attacks, ulcers, and other kinds of physical ailments.
• Stress keeps us sick longer.
• Stress causes us to drink more alcohol, eat more food, buy and horde more things, or smoke more cigarettes.

Because of this we NEED to make room for God to interrupt our rhythm of life.
I read the story of group who does ministry in the streets of some of our bigger cities. In this one particular story they were working with some prostitutes. As they listened to one of the ladies sharing her story, she shared she has tried everything to get out of prostitution. Then one of guys said, “have you tried God?” The woman’s response, “why would I do that?” My answer would have been, “Because he loves you that’s why!” and “He even likes you!”:

John 3:16-17 Living Translation (NLT)
16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave[a] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

God spent a lot of time with prostitutes, tax collectors, super religious people, and other low – life sinners.

• He interrupted the woman at the wells life
• He interrupted Zacheus’ life
• He interrupted Nicodemus’ life.

All of these people’s lives were pretty stressful. And they let God interrupt their stress. And their life were changed because of it.

How do we let God interrupt our lives in 2014?
For 5 minutes a day
• Take a deep breath and exhale slowly.
• Close your eyes
• For 5 minutes say, “I am God’s beloved”
• During that 5 minutes Think on your heavenly Father’s unfailing love, mercy and longing for you.

God will “innterrupt” your life and you will be changed.