Holy Interruption

Grocery shopping. Sit down and pay the bills. Make the kids some lunch. Drop some letters at the post office. Throw in another load of laundry. Answer a few emails. Return a couple phone calls. Answer a few more emails. Get the kids a snack. Quick finish that writing assignment. Does anyone hear the dog barking, she has to go out! Did I miss a zoom meeting? Did I mail those letters? Did I eat lunch? What day is it?

In a biography of C.S. Lewis, A.N. Wilson describes how’s Lewis’ life was, during nearly all of his productive years, interrupted by the demands of his adoptive mother who made him do all the shopping and housework. Lewis’ brother Warnie, lamented in his diaries how he himself was unhelpful and suggested that Lewis could have been an even more prolific writer if he had not been forced to spend countless hours doing domestic chores.

Lewis himself had a much different perspective. Far from being resentful about all the interruptions, Lewis was grateful and suggests that it was precisely these domestic demands that kept him in touch with life in a way that his Oxford colleagues were not. Wilson, the author, agreed and noted that it was the ordinary everyday aspects of life that gifted Lewis such empathetic insights into the basic human condition.

I call this finding Christ in the common. Because it’s where we spend the vast majority of our waking life, and when we can’t taste the holy and deeply meaningful in the simple and small, it’s likely to dull our taste buds for the extravagant feast.

Theologian Ronald Rolheiser dips into this when he says, “We must look for the hand of God in our interruptions. These often appear as a conspiracy of accidents, but through them God guides and tutors us. If we were totally in control of our own agendas, if we could simply plan and execute our lives according to our own dreams with no unwanted demands, I fear that many of us would slowly and subtly become selfish.”

Can you feel how deeply relevant this is for us, especially in the midst of wonky schedules and cramped routines? The possibility of common interruptions throughout our day is at an all time high, correct?

But it makes me wonder if our sense of the Divine is as well.

I find this incredibly challenging, and it’s an invitation that I am wildly grateful for.

So on this common Wednesday, in the middle of December, may you have eyes to see the holy within the interruption.