When Your Plans are Interrupted: Devotion for August 3

I assume you're like me—you do everything you can to avoid pain, whether physical or emotional.

I like security. I like safety. I like smooth sailing. And that's not a bad thing. God created us to value life and to protect ourselves. But if we cling too tightly to our security blankets, we may miss the very life God is inviting us to live.

Recently I came across this painting of Simon of Cyrene, the man the Roman soldiers pulled from the crowd and forced to carry Jesus' cross. He is rarely portrayed as the African man he was. Cyrene was a city in North Africa. What first caught my attention wasn't the cross—it was Simon's eyes. They are piercing. They seem to ask a question every one of us must eventually answer. And it happened as an interruption.

Perhaps Simon was simply walking home from work. Maybe he was on his way to the grocery store. Whatever his plans were, I'm certain they did not include becoming part of an execution procession. In an instant, his carefully planned day disappeared. He was handed hard, bloody, humiliating work.

Yet because his plans were interrupted, Simon found himself written into the greatest story in history.

There is a profound contrast here. What Simon was compelled to do, Jesus embraced willingly—for you and for me. And what Simon was forced to do, we are never forced to do. Jesus doesn't coerce anyone into following him. He doesn't place the cross on our shoulders against our will. Instead, he extends an invitation: "If anyone would come after me..."

Love never forces. Love invites.

Perhaps the greatest danger isn't suffering. Perhaps it's clinging so tightly to our own plans that we miss the holy interruptions through which God wants to write us into his story.

+Pr. Laurie

Featured art: Simon of Cyrene, Egbert Modderman, 2018, Museum of the Bible