ZPCBlog

Jenn and Mark McDonald attend ZPC with their 3 children. Jenn has been an active participant and past co-coordinator of the ZPC MOPS (Mother’s of Preschoolers) group, a High Impact Volunteer at Wheeler Mission, and a member of Revive and Restore Women’s Ministry. Occasionally, you will see her in her happy place, playing flute during worship.

Today's Scripture: Mark 5:25-34

I have been purposefully homeschooling my three children for the past four years, through the preschool and early elementary years. And there is nothing quite like raising children to accelerate God's process of sanctification in your life. When those children are around you every moment of every day, it can be even more intense.

My life is not full of grand moments. It’s full of little things: doing the dishes, reading a book with my kids, putting a band-aid on a skinned knee. I have experienced how much I am learning to be like Jesus in the little things: delighting in and smiling regularly at my children, making eye contact when they tell me stories (for all of the story), and sitting with them in their pain.

My children's pain, real or imagined, physical or emotional, self-inflected or sibling-inflicted, interrupts my day constantly. I have had many days of practicing setting aside my own desires and goals to sit with them in that pain, pray for them, listen to them. Sometimes, I get the opportunity to point them to Christ with my words, but more often, it's my "interruptibility," patience, comfort, and prayer that have to speak for me. 

Jesus had compassion; Jesus was interruptible. That’s become a phrase I repeat daily. As you read in the Gospels, it's incredible to note the amount of times Jesus is described as having compassion, and he is moved to action from that compassion. I love the story in Mark 5 of Jesus healing the woman who had suffered from bleeding. He has a mission. He is on his way to help Jairus’s daughter, but he stops. He interrupts his mission to minister to this woman. In verse 34, he sends her out saying,

“Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace and be healed of your disease.” 

When my children interrupt my day, am I able to step into that pain to help them go back to their day in peace?

There is a lot of pain around us in our world today. What are you doing with it? May I challenge you to be “interruptible," to listen to the stories with compassion, to pray for Father God to bring us all closer to himself, to ask Jesus to sanctify us, and to allow the Holy Spirit to fill us with his peace?

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