Intentional Disruption

Saturday’s parenting conference was outstanding. Lonnie Jones, as a keynote speaker, shared an abundance of valuable information. If you were not able to attend this year, I hope that you will consider attending future events and/or encourage others you know to. As Lonnie said on Saturday, our greatest resource in parenting and most other matters in this life is other Christians.

I had the opportunity to teach one of the breakout sessions. While I feel far from being the expert on parenting or have the same training and experience as someone like Lonnie Jones, I did manage to gather a few thoughts worth sharing. Among them was the realization that the way to slow down time as it passes so quickly is to intentionally disrupt your life. Our lives are built around routine. It does not matter if things are going well or poorly, as long as there is some routine, time passes quickly. We should not be afraid to disrupt routine, to miss ball games just to spend the day as a family doing something different, to take a simple vacation at a random time of year instead of the usual summer trip, to spend the day together at home instead of the dozens of places the world demands you to be, or go to the conference or service project at church instead of practices, games, work functions, or other things that have established themselves near the top of your busy schedules.

Some of the examples of spiritual maturity that we find in Scripture are presented in the form of disruption. We can consider Moses at the burning bush, Peter, James, and John beginning their walk with Jesus, and Jesus appearing to Paul among others. Disruption helps to hear and see what we may have otherwise missed, and we should welcome the opportunity to grow when we have it.