Divine Disruption

Interruption versus disruption. One is an interjection into an ongoing conversation. The other is something that causes a complete breakdown in the conversation. If I were to choose which of the two characterizes Advent, I’d choose disruption. The coming of Jesus disrupted everything, a 10.0 magnitude earthquake type disruption, in fact. There’s a reason why history was divided historically into BC and AD — Before Christ and Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord — with the birth of Jesus. 

Of course, most everyone alive at that time didn’t even feel a tremor. “As in the days of Noah” everyone just went on with their daily lives. Even Joseph treated it more like an interruption than a disruption, at least at first. He learns that his betrothed is pregnant, a disruption to his marriage plans for sure, but he resolved he would divorce her with as little fuss as possible and then go on with his life. But that changed when he received a message in a dream that turned an interruption into a disruption. Life was not what he thought it was. This was not an unfotunate indiscretion, but an intervention of God by which he was going to turn the world on its head. In obedience, Joseph embraced the disruption.

Advent is a time when we pause and consider how God disrupts things. First with the birth of Jesus and finally when, “as in the days of Noah,” the one born to save sinners unexpectedly returns to judge sinners. Between now and then divine disruption continues every time a person places their faith in Jesus. As the New English Bible puts it, “When anyone is united to Christ. There is a new world; the old order has gone, and new order has already begun.” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

As we await the return of our Savior, we need to be sure that we are treating his coming into our life as a disruption and not an interruption. What I mean is that we need to heed Paul’s instruction to “no longer walk as the Gentiles do.” Rather, we are to “put off our old self, which belongs to [our] former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and . . . be renewed in the spirit of [our] minds, and . . . put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:17, 22-24) That is a disruption, not an interruption. Jesus is not someone who interrupts the conversation and then we pick up the thread of the of it afterwards. He takes it in a whole new direction. Our task is to follow where he leads.