Note: Following is Chapter Four of David Classen’s book, “Growing Older Gracefully”
“Old people are stuck in their ways” is often the assessment the younger generation makes concerning those who are older. In all honesty, it’s also a frequent self-assessment of us older people. We do like our routines.
As a pastor, I often visited an elderly widower in the afternoon. He would already have his evening meal place setting on the table, ready for the meal that was still several hours away.
My wife and I stayed in the guest room in an assisted living facility for several days while visiting my wife’s mother, who was a resident. Immersing ourselves in the facility’s daily activities, we observed the set routines for meals, baths, the dispensing of medications, exercise times, movie time, etc. Lots of routine. The residents, however, also formed their own unique routines in addition to the institutional routines. Most were not happy when those routines were interrupted or changed.
We seniors also need a lot less in our day to consider the day packed. Any additions to our schedule disrupt the day’s routine. One doctor’s appointment or a grocery store run is more than enough, prompting labeling the day an extraordinarily busy one. Don’t suggest adding something else to such an already packed day.
No one likes interruptions, but we seniors find them especially upsetting. If there’s to be an interruption, we’d like the interruption be put on the schedule, far in advance, please. Want us to be spontaneous? Only if we can schedule it, again, far in advance, if possible.
As we grow older, having a diminishing number of responsibilities is common. This allows us the luxury of becoming more comfortable with a daily routine. Unfortunately, many with whom we relate on a regular basis are younger and have busy lives. They can’t always accommodate our schedules or plans, and so we find we must yield to their time frame.
When I was a pastor, I left the house one morning, telling my wife that I would be working on my sermon about the interruptible life. She said, “Maybe you’ll get interrupted writing your sermon and have another illustration for the message.” I replied, “I hope not.” Then I thought, “Wow! I’ll be speaking on living an interruptible life, and I don’t want to be interrupted while writing the sermon!”
My preparation for that sermon revealed that Jesus lived a very interruptible life. Yet his life was a perfect fulfillment of the heavenly Father’s plans for him. The four gospels record some thirty-five miracles which Jesus performed. Almost every one, if not all, resulted from Jesus being interrupted.
On one occasion when Jesus was teaching, Scripture recounts, “while he was saying this, a ruler came and knelt before him and said, ‘My daughter has just died. But come and put your hand on her, and she will live.’ Jesus got up and went with him, and so did his disciples” (Matthew 9:18–19). Whatever they had planned, the plans just got changed.
While they followed the grieving father to his home, “Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.’ Another interruption. Jesus turned and saw her” (vs. 20–22). His first interruption was interrupted by a second interruption. So, Jesus talks with the woman, then heals her. Finally arriving at the grieving father’s house, Jesus raises his daughter back to life again, but not without the delay caused by the desperate woman.
If Jesus’s miracles were usually not planned but resulted from interruptions, then what do we think our chance is of succeeding at following Jesus without being flexible? Faith in him requires flexibility in following him, even at an older age.
Have you ever been in a store, asked a clerk for help, feeling as if you were interrupting the clerk’s work? I have. Do they not realize that the customer is the reason they have a job in the first place?
Successful retail businesses operate on the expectation that customers will interrupt the shopkeeper. Stocking shelves, tidying up the store, working on the financial books, all such work stops when a customer walks in the door. I like what was written on yardsticks years ago in the Midwest that were given away by a lumber yard: “You are not an interruption to our business; you are our business.”
Our resistance to interruptions can be a control issue: a refusal of accepting God’s agenda for us. Do we want to do the Lord’s business each day? One way God does his business with us is by interrupting what we’re doing. What we see as an interruption of our plans is an appointment for carrying out God’s plans. To be used by God, we must be interruptible. Woody Allen has been quoted as saying, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
While God has us here on earth, he has a plan, his purpose for us. This plan and purpose will not always fit neatly into the predetermined, comfortable schedule we have for our day. As a follower of Jesus, we should accept the implied disclaimer in his teachings: “Your schedule is subject to change without notice.”Living out a faith in God requires we remain flexible. C. S. Lewis believed we should resist seeing unpleasant events as interruptions in our life. The truth, Lewis explained, is that our so-called interruptions make up our real life that he gives us day by day. Being interruptible is a key to growing older gracefully. A growing faith and deepening trust in God can keep us flexible.
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