“Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?” Mark 6:3 NKJC
By Bro. John L. Cash
I’ve had a hard time getting a column written this week. It seems like every time I sit down to write, I have some sort of interruption. As soon as I sit down at my laptop, the phone rings, there is a knock at my door, or somebody asks me to do something else.
It can make a person feel aggravated and frustrated.
I think, however, I’m dealing with situations like this better now than I would have a few years ago. A devotion that I read from a book written in the 1800’s changed my way of thinking.
The author described in vivid detail an imaginative tale of a typical day in the life of the Lord Jesus as He was working in his carpentry shop.
The day had been full of difficulties and trials. After He had finished up His work day, swept the floor, and was locking the front door, He heard footsteps on the street. A customer had shown up at Jesus’ shop just as He was leaving to go home for the night. He wanted to talk with Him about a piece of furniture that he wanted to have built.
In the devotional story, the Lord Jesus smiled at the man, unlocked the front door, and took the man inside and gave him a seat. Together they spent an hour making plans for the furniture that the man wanted built. And after they meeting was finished, Jesus whistled as He walked toward His home. You see (the writer said), Jesus understood something that we (in our haste and impatience) have not yet learned. In every instance of interruption and change of plans, the Lord said to Himself, “This is the will of My Father.”
In God’s way of thinking, interruptions are not hindrances. More often than not, the Lord is changing our plans to bring people into our lives for us to minister to.
When we realize that, our days can be filled with joy and peace as we accept our role in God’s eternal plan.
(Here’s wishing you a wonderful new week! Please excuse me now, because I have to run… The phone is ringing again….)
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 31 years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. (On week days has a desk-job at a public school, where he used to teach Latin on closed-circuit-television.) He and his lovely wife, Susan, live in the parsonage next door to the Antioch Christian Church (where the congregation had hayride and stew at Bo Clark’s house last night.) Their kids include Spencer (age 25), his wife Madeline (age 25), and Seth (age 22), and his wife Leanne (age 21). You can send him a note at brotherjohn@ilovechurchcamp.com.
