Life Happens

How often do you find yourself staring to do something important only to be interrupted, having to attend to something else before continuing what you were doing?

Now when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him. Just then there came a man named Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. He fell at Jesus' feet and begged him to come to his house, for he had an only daughter, about twelve years old, who was dying.  As he went, the crowds pressed in on him.  - Luke 8:40-42

In today's Gospel reading, Luke shows us that life has a way of interrupting life, even for Jesus.

Just as he sets out to help a girl who is sick, a woman approaches and touches his cloak, seeking healing for herself.

Whether we see her as acting out of desperation or self-interest, we are led to believe that her decision to seek help for herself delayed Jesus enough that the girl he was going to save died.

But what could have been a tragedy turned out to be an even greater blessing, when Jesus returns the girl to life.

There are so many things we could focus on in this story.  We have Jairus, who left his daughter to die alone wrestling with impatience and fear.  We have the woman who had been labeled unclean and banished from society, reaching out for help.  We have Jesus feeling the power of healing leave him.

But we also have the reality of life throwing us a curve ball.

The crowd pressed in on Jesus making demand of him, just the way our daily lives press in on us, looking for ways to shift our focus, distract and redirect us.

Jesus reacts the way we would.  Who did that?  But then he has compassion, gives the woman his attention and then moves on.

There is a lesson for all of us in that.

We too can be distracted and may even find ourselves annoyed.  But we can show compassion and deal with it before getting back to work.

So, may that be our choice today, to deal with life's interruptions with compassion and move on.

Can we do that?

More to come...