Are We Willing to be Disturbed?
I attended a presentation this week on discipleship. One of the questions offered by the speaker was “Are we willing to be disturbed?”
The short answer for me is, of course, I don’t like to be disturbed. It is easy to think that disruptions in our lives keep us from doing important work. The reality for me is often the disruptions are the important ministry God calls me to do. The most frequent example for me is emergency hospital calls. They don’t always come at a convenient time but they are always important ministry. When I am called, I let go of what I am doing, to answer the call.
There is also a deeper level of disruption. Here I look beyond individual events of our lives to how we live our life? How stuck are we in our ways? It goes, in part, back to the question of change I wrote about recently. We often have our own way of doing things but is it God’s way? Are we open to God doing things in a new way? Are we willing to let God speak to us in a new way or do we insist on doing things our way? Do we insist on doing things the same way we have always done them?
Are you willing to let God disturb you? I hope I am. All I want to do is God’s will.
Peace,
Fr. Jeff
Those are good questions to contemplate. I’ve been (slowly) working my way through von Hildebrand’s “Transformation in Christ”. It is right along the lines of what you’re talking about. We must constantly change to be like Christ (who is unchanging). It’s not that orthodoxy changes, but none of us are in a position in which we don’t need to be changed ourselves.