Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Zach Hoag Is Uncategorized

Home
Sacred Interruptions: An Unusual Kind of Grace

Sacred Interruptions: An Unusual Kind of Grace

Last updated on: August 16, 2018 at 2:21 pm by Guest Contributor

Sacred Interruptions: An Unusual Kind of Grace 2018-08-16T14:21:29-05:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The following is a guest post by A.J. Swoboda, a pastor, professor, and author from Portland, OR. His new book, The Dusty Ones, is on sale now.

There’s that old story of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. One day, Mr. Schopenhauer walked down the street only to bump into, head on, another pedestrian who walked casually without paying attention to where they were going.

photo-1440985465094-6ac443aab454

Totally involved in his own self-involvement, the pedestrian asked Schopenhauer, “Who do you think you are?” The question was responded to quite perfectly with kindness to the stranger: “Who am I? If only I actually knew.”

Often, we are awakened to ask the most important, pressing, timely questions when our own lives—our own Schopenhauerian “self-involvements”—are interrupted.

So much of my life takes place in coffee shops these days—writing, meetings, texting, responding, emailing. And screens mediate a great deal of it. I feel like I live from screen to screen. Computer. Phone. Movie. TV. Computer. Back to the phone. I live, it seems, from screen to screen. And what are these screens other than being present elsewhere than where I in body am.

A life of screens is a life of disembodiment.

I’m less and less actually speaking to, working with, serving, people and things that are physically present to me. Which means I am in a different world than my body actually is.

Recently, I walked down the street with my head curled toward my phone answering a text and I neatly and flawlessly managed to walk into the middle of the street. No one hit me. But I could have been hit. I looked up and realized I wasn’t paying attention whatsoever to what was going on, where I was, where I was walking. And I was interrupted to attention like awaking from a dream.

Who am I?

If only I actually knew.

Sometimes we need to be woken up, interrupted, moved toward the deeper questions. Therein lies the holiness of an interruption. Long ago, John Wesley spoke with great clarity about this idea he called “prevenient grace.” By it, he meant that it was God’s grace, which interrupted us to want grace. It was a grace that interrupted us, that moved us, that drew us. None of us, Wesley believed, just came to grace out of the blue. Rather, he argued, God awoke us to be drawn to grace. It is an act of grace that made us available to the reality of grace.

I think an interruption, a bumping into a bystander, a walking into the street, is God’s way of leading us to grace. Interruptions, one could say, are a kind of prevenient grace.

Henri Nouwen, in his book Reaching Out, puts it marvelously:

My whole life I have been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I discovered that interruptions were my work.

Jesus interrupted constantly. He called people from their tax collector booths. He interrupted funerals. He interrupted conversations. He interrupted plans. In my recent book The Dusty Ones—a book that examines the importance and even holiness of all the wandering experiences in the Bible—I talk about being Spirit-baptized and what that means for our lives. It means, in sum, that when we are filled with God’s power and Spirit, nowhere is Godless territory. God is with us everywhere we go.

But when we see our plans as the plans of God, we fail to recognize God’s Spirit who transcends our plans.

What’s the point?

Our screens are ruining our ability to get lost in the sacred joys of interruptions. We are everywhere but where we are. What if we chose to see those little interruptions—of people, of late appointments, of the far-to-long conversation—as prevenient grace awakening us to the realities of the graces of the Triune God?

Then we probably might actually start knowing—as Shopenhauer so wished he could—who we really are.

Dr. A.J. Swoboda is a pastor, writer, and professor in Portland, Oregon. He is @mrajswoboda on Twitter and is the author of The Dusty Ones: How Wandering Deepens Your Faith (Baker).

Previous Post

April 1, 2016

Resurrection is the Christian term for defiance

Next Post

April 7, 2016 Brian Zahnd: The Hope of Western Christianity is Mysticism

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month December 2018 August 2018 July 2018 July 2017 May 2017 January 2017 November 2016 October 2016 August 2016 July 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 March 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 March 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz