A long wooden footbridge crosses an alcove of White Rock Lake. Pedaling across it one day, something coming from behind breaks the surface of my peripheral vision, head height, about 10 yards to the right, over the water. About a half-mile back I saw for the first time one of the bald eagles that have taken up residence near the lake. It was soaring in high circles over a nearby field on my opposite side, to the west. Now, parallel to my ride, it descends past me to make a run only inches above the water’s surface across the full length of the bay. The eagle’s size, speed, silence, and level glide have my mesmerized attention, which remains transfixed as the bird’s talons touch the water just before it arcs right, soaring up and out of view over the nearby woods.
When Paul travels in what is now Turkey, and expects to continue his ministry in that region, God breaks into his peripheral vision with a call to cross the Aegean Sea to Macedonia (Acts 16:6-10). Almost two thousand years later, John Lennon describes life as what happens while you’re busy making other plans. When a distraction from mundane exercise becomes the event’s noteworthy occasion, which is the distraction, which the purpose?
A few days later, I tell my visiting daughter about my encounter with the bald eagle. As I reach the point when the eagle arrests my attention she interrupts: “Did you fall, Dad?!” She has a legitimate reason for asking the question. I have fallen 3 or 4 times under odd circumstances in the 15 or so years I have been riding actively. I assure her I did not—that there is no impending demise in the rest of the story—and continue.
Many of the intrusions of God’s grace in this world—many of his runs along world’s surface—entail the suffering of his servants: Joseph, Job, Jesus, and Stephen should suffice to make the point. We are also his servants, so it should not surprise us when the distraction which enters our periphery is in suffering’s form. We may assume that God is ignoring or rejecting us—distracting us—but in truth what he does is always the most notable part of our journey, and often the means by which he delivers grace to others.
Suffering is not an afterthought in Christianity. Following Jesus means following his cross and taking up our own (Matthew 16:24).
To a week focused on the distractions God uses to center us on himself and his will.