Busy About My Father’s Business??

I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot lately.  It all started with my blogging BFF Adela from Once A Little Girl.  She wrote a post about her family being lost in the big city while she as a four year old went on exploring by herself.  The post is called, appropriately enough, Lost and Found.  She uses her wonderful writing style and excellent sense of humor to liken herself to our Lord when His family went searching for Him.

Then I had an interesting teaching moment with my daughter, who is seventeen and super committed at church.  She leads worship for some of the services and sings backup for several others.  Well, my recently widowed mother came in for Easter due to the kindness of her wonderful neighbors.  They were going to be visiting family near our home, and offered to drive her the almost three hours so that she could visit us for the holiday.

My daughter had already sang Friday, led worship on Saturday and was part of a special number on Easter Sunday morning.  During our Easter brunch, which was kind of disasterous by the way, Mom got a call from her ride that they would be leaving a little later than they thought.  This meant we had two choices:  1) Drop my mother off at a fast food restaurant to wait an hour and a half so that my daughter could sing again Sunday night (she was only backup this particular service)  OR 2) Make sure that Mom/Grandma was delivered a few minutes before her neighbors could pick her up so that we could enjoy each other’s company a little longer.

Now, many of us who have mega responsibilities at church have experienced choices similar to this.  Needless to say, I needed to coach my daughter through this lesson on priorities.  In the end, she was able to get a ride to church, and the rest of the family dropped Mom off at the necessary time.  However, the whole experience got me thinking about something I’ve been meditating on for some time.  Sometimes we are faced with choices about how to serve God.  To someone young, either in years or in the faith, it might seem like serving in church is the ultimate highest…but that is so untrue!

Sometimes, our family has been so “busy” about our Father’s business at church, that we don’t have time to cry with a neighbor, or to honor our parents, or to pick up a visitor (which is supposed to be the whole point for crying out loud!)

Jesus was always willing to be interrupted, and He never seemed pressured by time or to be in a hurry.

This morning a friend posted a status on Facebook regarding Satan making us busy at times, and my Pastor consistently says that Satan schedules distractions for us.  I think that sometimes these “distractions” can be good things, like singing at church…

I remember one time last year when my daughter and I were on our way to a Ladies Conference at church.  One of us was supposed to be there early, but I don’t remember who or why.  It was raining cats and dogs, and just before we pulled up to the building I saw a young lady pushing a stroller in the pouring rain.  I remember saying something to my daughter like, “I wish we had time to help them.”…and then I realized how ridiculous that statement was.    So, I turned the car around and drove the lady and her sopping wet stroller and baby to their home.

Problems come to people at inconvenient times.  The answer to those problems (and many times we are that answer) will come wrapped in inconvenience too.  Maybe we should look at our busyness as the inconvenience, not the scheduled “serving”.  In cases like these, what is my Father’s business?  What does the audience of Heaven applaud?  Leaving Grandma at Mickey D’s to wait for an hour and a half because we have to go to our eighth practice in a week?  Driving by a soaking mother and baby because I don’t want to be tardy for PRAYER?  Aren’t we funny?

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