Canter Bridge

Nothing ever happens when it should. Things don’t go down for convenience. Life is a series of interruptions.

Deal with it, the Universe seems to snarl.

So does Paul lay on his protégé Timothy the warning that you’ve just got to be ready to respond. No whining. No evasion. When important things happen, you’re never off the clock.

I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. (2 Timothy 4:1–2 ESV)

The professionalism of Christian service threatens the appropriate always-on nature of genuinely sacrificial service. We self-protect and, more often than not, end up over-protecting. We insist upon our selfish rigidity and dress it up in the language of ‘self-care’.

Without doubt, it’s a jungle out there and it will wear you down if you don’t find your way to appropriate boundaries.

But stuff happens when it’s going to happen. Only a healthy capacity for surfing the waves as they come at you and a deep conviction that Providence knows and sends the waves sets you up to endure the storm and shake off the squalls.

Have your game face ready in season and out of season, Paul tenderly but firmly tells his Timothy. We just deal with it.