Jay’s Blog – Unintended Intrusions

I was reading in my Lectio Divina the other day, and the Lord gave me the passage I wanted to share with you. Mark 7:24-30:

24 And from there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.[a] And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden. 25 But immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 And he said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.” 30 And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

The first thing that the Holy Spirit pointed out to me about this passage is kind of weird. It’s the section that says, “And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden.“ 

This struck me because, after all, Jesus is God. He’s the author and creator of the universe. John 1 tells us that Jesus is the Word, and the Word was God. Genesis 1 tells us that God created everything by his Word, through Christ.  Colossians 1 tells us that “he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Jesus is all-powerful, the author and sustainer of the universe. Unlike us, he can literally make anything he wants to happen happen. So, in this passage, if he wanted to stay hidden from everyone, including this Syrophoenician woman, this Gentile, don’t you think he could have pulled that off? 

The reality is he absolutely could have. And yet, in submitting himself to becoming flesh and living among us, he is allowing himself to be subject to life not happening according to his plan or even his will or his wishes. He is opening himself to surprise, both pleasant and unpleasant. He is willingly yielding to creation, in all its beauty and brokenness, in ways he may not intend. And in doing so, he yields to the Father’s plan for his life and allows himself to be interrupted. 

Here, the interruption gives him a great opportunity. An opportunity to heal a child, a child literally beyond hope, not only because she’s inhabited by a demon, a hound of hell, but because she is beyond help as a Gentile, as one who is not a child of the promise, one who the Messiah did not come to save, a dog. 

Jesus isn’t frustrated by his overturned plans; he isn’t aggravated by interruptions. Every time this happens, he pivots and responds with anticipation and compassion. And here, in the absolute beauty of this unintended interruption, a child is healed, hell is set on its heels, and people like you and me who never had a chance are welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

I know you’re grateful for your family and for the home that God has given you, and so many of you have told me how grateful you are for your work or your children attending school at this place, for your own place in this community. But are you truly grateful for the unintended intrusions in your life? For the ways, both pleasant and unpleasant, that God frustrates your plans and purposes? 

This year marks the tenth anniversary of my arrest and jailing for carrying a gun through airport security. It was all a terrible accident, a massive intrusion on my plans. We were planning to travel to St. Louis to attend the wedding of dear friends who lived there, who have since moved to Tyler and are now school parents. But we were running late because we were waiting for another dear friend to deliver her baby in Tyler, a baby who is now a student at our school. I have a concealed carry license, and back then, I carried a small gun in my backpack as one measure of protection for our school students. We were running so late that I forgot to remove the gun in my car before running through Love Field and throwing my backpack down on the x-ray machine.

Now, I believe there’s a statute on the books that allows concealed carry holders to simply pay a fine and return their gun to their car. No such law existed back then, but the officer had the discretion to arrest or let me go. One zealous officer later, I was handcuffed and taken to the security holding area at Love Field. I found out later that the officers wanted to let me go at that point but learned that since they had legally initiated the arrest, they had to carry it out and transport me to the Dallas Jail. The officer who took me down there apologized as he drove me. By the time I got to jail and booked in, it was too late to post bond. I had to spend the night in the county jail. 

As I sat in the holding area, surrounded by many people who were there for lots of things, I looked around, and there was a guy behind me, bent over and shaking. He was wearing no shirt, only a pair of pants. It was pretty evident that he was there on a drug charge or something like that. The room was over-airconditioned, and he was obviously cold. 

I was wearing a shirt and undershirt. The Lord said, “Give him your shirt.” I looked around. There were honestly some pretty scary dudes all around me. I didn’t know how this jail thing worked, but I had seen the movies, and I was afraid that if I gave the guy my shirt, he or the other guys in there might take it as a sign of weakness and kill me or gang up on me. The Lord said again, “Give him your shirt.” So, I took it off and gave it to him. He didn’t say anything; he just put it on, and it warmed him up. I just sat there still, waiting for someone to come and jump me or something. Instead, the guy two seats over just stared at me and said, “What are you doing here, man? You don’t belong here.” Instead of protesting my innocence, I just smiled at him. 

I’d like to tell you that the guy who got my shirt asked me to tell him about the Jesus that I knew, that I shared the gospel with him that evening, and that he and twelve of his cellmates came to know Jesus that night. Maybe he knew Jesus already, and getting the shirt was an acknowledgment that God loves and sees him. Maybe that moment was a deposit God used to click in his mind later. But, regardless of how God uses it in that guy’s life, he reminded me that night of his words: 

And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? ‘ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. (Matt. 27)

I spent all night in jail until my wife could post a bond to get me out. It cost me thousands of dollars to post bond, to hire a lawyer to work with the grand jury to no-bill me, then to have my record expunged, and to pay the fine to get my gun back. I look back on that now, and other than humbling me, and it certainly did, the only good thing I can see with my limited vision that came out of that night was for that cold and shaking guy to get a shirt. God taught me that, in his economy, caring for those he loves is worth any inconvenience, any cost. After all, he was taken where he didn’t want to go and paid the ultimate cost for you and me. 

So, I’m grateful for the intrusion on my life that night, thankful that I got the chance to serve Jesus in a simple, pure, and very costly way, a way I would have never chosen. 

What about you? How has God detoured you from your plans to take you somewhere you never would have chosen? Maybe through the illness of yourself or a loved one, an unwanted, unexpected job change, or someone stepping into your life that you didn’t expect and might not have wanted? Maybe something as simple as someone showing up for Thanksgiving this year that you weren’t planning on and you’re kind of thinking is going to disrupt your shalom? 

Can you be grateful for these unintended intrusions? These things are things that you may not want but that God has placed in your life for your good and his glory. What are those past and present things, and how can you give glory and praise to God for them? How can you help your children and those you love to see them and give thanks for them?

As you sit around the table this Thanksgiving, God is giving you a great opportunity to give thanks, not only for the obvious blessings but also for the unintended intrusions. He is good beyond measure in all these things.