On his return, Jesus was welcomed by a crowd. They were all there expecting him. A man came up, Jairus by name. He was president of the meeting place. He fell at Jesus’ feet and begged him to come to his home because his twelve-year-old daughter, his only child, was dying. Jesus went with him, making his way through the pushing, jostling crowd.
In the crowd that day there was a woman who for twelve years had been afflicted with hemorrhages. She had spent every penny she had on doctors but not one had been able to help her. She slipped in from behind and touched the edge of Jesus’ robe. At that very moment her hemorrhaging stopped. Jesus said, “Who touched me?”
When no one stepped forward, Peter said, “But Master, we’ve got crowds of people on our hands. Dozens have touched you.”
Jesus insisted, “Someone touched me. I felt power discharging from me.”
When the woman realized that she couldn’t remain hidden, she knelt trembling before him. In front of all the people, she blurted out her story—why she touched him and how at that same moment she was healed.
Jesus said, “Daughter, you took a risk trusting me, and now you’re healed and whole. Live well, live blessed!”
While he was still talking, someone from the leader’s house came up and told him, “Your daughter died. No need now to bother the Teacher.”
Jesus overheard and said, “Don’t be upset. Just trust me and everything will be all right.” Going into the house, he wouldn’t let anyone enter with him except Peter, John, James, and the child’s parents.
Everyone was crying and carrying on over her. Jesus said, “Don’t cry. She didn’t die; she’s sleeping.” They laughed at him. They knew she was dead.
Then Jesus, gripping her hand, called, “My dear child, get up.” She was up in an instant, up and breathing again!
Luke 8: 41-56
Productivity…what a buzz word.
The world around us is telling us to be productive, get things done, check it all off.
You can listen to a bajillion podcasts about productivity hacks and ways to do more on less time. “You can have a 4 hour work week if you just follow these 5 steps to being more productive than you’ve ever been.”
And what could be wrong with productivity? Isn’t it the key to success?
Well here is my productivity pitch to you today…go with me here: (said in infomercial voice)
“Want to know the single greatest productivity hack? The only way to get more done? Do you want to do more of the stuff that you’re called to, that you’re made to do? Do you want to be involved in the stuff that lasts and is eternal? The stuff that actually matters?
(studio audience yells in unison: YES!!! with smiles and fists in the air)
“Ok then, allow yourself to be interrupted! Let’s be ok with being distracted!”
Cue the sad sound when music screeches to a halt…the studio audience gets up and leaves because….
That sounds like the worst productivity hack ever.
But I’m here to tell you, because I know it to be true from my own life: being open to interruption is the key to us doing the things we’re called to do, and becoming the people we’ve been wired to be.
The productivity game can be a trap. It can blind us to people in front of us as it turns our focus inward: to our needs, our time, our organization, our business, our finances, our dreams…none of which are bad things…until they are our only thing.
If Jesus is our guide and we are to be a mirror of Him…we’ve got a lot to learn about heavenly distractions.
He’s got an upside-down-view of productivity. (Duh…he’s got an upside-down version to everything.)
Jesus was moving through the crowd on a VERY important mission, He had a very important task to accomplish: the healing of a dying little girl. And not just any little girl, the little one of an influential leader, a very important little girl. And no doubt she was important to Jesus. He pushed through the crowds, laser focused on the goal set before Him.
Until…he stopped.
“Someone touched me…”
His disciples said what any of us would say, “yep…there’s about a thousand folks touchin ya right now…let’s keep it movin’ Jesus we’ve got a girl to heal.” (That is if the disciples had been from the Dirty South.)
“No…someone has touched me because I can feel that power has left me.”
(Cool side note…that word power there is translated as “an achieving power”, meaning that Jesus knew that whoever touched Him had already been healed. It had already been done.)
So, knowing that, could Jesus had kept right on moving? Keep pushing to the goal He had set? Yep. Because He knew that someone had already gotten from Him what they needed. He didn’t have to stop pushing forward in order for that healing to be done. It was already done.
But He didn’t.
He stopped. He demanded to know.
I love this…”Bueller….Beuller…” moment, as Jesus looked around the quiet crowd.
(Referencing the dry professor in Ferris Beuller’s day off)
He waited for an answer.
“Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed.”
You guys, how precious is this moment?
The woman, who had been in hiding, bleeding for 12 years, isolated, lonely, unclean; this woman, knowing that SHE COULD NO LONGER GO UNNOTICED…she fell at His feet.
She told Him everything.
She, indeed, had already been healed simply by her fingers-touching-hem moment. Her physical healing had already come.
But Jesus always has more in mind than the physical.
Jesus knew that there was more healing to be done.
He wanted her to feel seen, known, heard, spoken for. He wanted her to feel the quickening of a hear that realizes, “I can no longer go unnoticed.” The demand that the entire procession stop, the repetitive question of who had touched Him, it was all on purpose.
He wanted her to feel the weight of His gaze because in that she would be forever changed.
Then this moving scene is interrupted (cue record screeching noise) when someone announces to Jairus, the influential leader who’s daughter’s life hung in the balance,
“Don’t bother Jesus anymore Jairus, your daughter has died. So don’t even worry about it.”
(paraphrased of course and said with a drawl)
Here’s where the true friction of the story lies:
For Jesus to stop and give time and energy and Himself to the “distraction”…to the unplanned tug on His clothing, meant that He would have to put a pause on the very important thing He had planned to do. If he had a day planner, top of His list that day was to heal that sweet baby girl. And He had set out to do it. So, to stop and shift His eyes towards the interruption seemed, to everyone around, like the opposite of productivity.
And even deeper into the crowd’s frame of mind that day: the scandalous fact that the life that was hanging in the balance was the life of a religious leader’s daughter, and the life that had just reached out and gave a tug was that of an unclean woman…how could He stop and “waste” time, energy, resources…that were so precious and so needed… on HER of all people. Influential vs unclean, to them there was a clear winner of who was worth His time.
But for Jesus, two lives hung in the balance that day.
For Jesus, both were deemed worthy. Both were deemed important.
His desire to heal the one, to achieve that goal, did not disqualify this unplanned encounter.
His focus to do what had been asked of Him: HEAL MY DAUGHTER! did not blind Him to the one who was brave enough to find His hem.
Jesus moved on to the house of Jairus despite the report that his daughter had died. Unfazed by the debbie downer news that had just been delivered.
Don’t call me a heretic but I imaging Jesus healing the woman, hearing that the daughter had died, and him silently turning towards the disciples and putting his rad sunglasses back on as if to say, “Let’s do this thing.” UN.FAZED.
He walked in to the home of Jairus and told them all to stop wailing…which is just hysterical to me.
Like can you imagine Jesus just rollin’ in like “Hey y’all…shhh…calm down and quit wailin’ like that.” Like He was annoyed.
He walked right in to that death-filled-room, grabbed that little girl’s hand and in an instant death had to find a new home. She was instantly alive.
Jesus, because of His open-handed view of His calling, of His life, was not afraid to be interrupted. Distraction didn’t frustrate Him. Unplanned people, unplanned need, unplanned demands, they didn’t send him into a tizzy as He thought about how in the world He would now complete the rest of His goals for that day.
People were his goals. People were the very thing He set out to do from the moment he had to wrap Himself in our skin to make a way for our life.
And because He knew this, that people were His aim, He was willing to be distracted that day. And not only did He heal a woman from the top of her head to the bottom of her feet, but he went on to do something that NO ONE ELSE could do:
Raise from the dead.
He had the corner on this market. No one had the power to raise back to life.
Healing had been done in His name, other rabbi’s had been known to heal.
But raise from the dead…no one could do that.
Distraction and interruption led to greater glory for Him.
Unplanned need cleared the path for a greater miracle.
Friends, I am in this tension with you. The tension of achieving versus becoming.
The back and forth feeling that if we do one thing it’s at the sacrifice of another.
But it’s just not the truth in God’s kingdom. If our lives are submitted to Him, if we hunger and thirst for Him, He gives us His heart. And with His heart comes His goals, His dreams, His vision. And the guarantee that your laser sharp focus will reset on people. Broken people.
If we’re not careful we can structure and plan out our every minute of every day in such a way that we become a protected fortress against distraction. Nothing unplanned will throw us off the scent of our goals.
But what if that something unplanned, that distraction that stumbles across your path, is what you really need?
What if it’s a heavenly distraction, sent into your path to allow you to be used by Him.
Planning is a tricky thing. We can easily fool ourselves into thinking that it’s ours to do. That our plans are what’s best for us.
But friends, His ways aren’t always like our ways. His goals don’t always match ours, in fact they rarely do.
And the key to success isn’t getting more things done. The key to our success is becoming more like Jesus.
We need to lay that reality over our productivity plans and see where they line up and where they don’t.
What if we lived with an open handed view of our schedule, our goals, our productivity? What if we learned to live in the tension of having and setting goals, holding a schedule, setting boundaries and being productive but also being willing to lay it all down for a holy distraction, a divine interruption?
What if we held our productivity with a loose grip and were willing to throw it all out the window to make way for what He might have planned for us?
What if giving margin for the divine to be interjected into the mundane fueled the fire in us and we actually got more done across the board…because we were coming alive? Productivity has a lot more to do with who we are than what we plan.
Let’s practice Kingdom-productivity, a balance of achieving our own goals but not at the sacrifice of Jesus’s call on our lives.
Let’s submit our visions, plans and strategies to Him and be willing to make the trade for anything He has for us instead!
Let’s keep our eyes wide open for heavenly distractions, holy interruptions and not be people who run from them when we see them coming a mile away!
Let’s stop the rat race and rest. Rest in the knowledge that He sees the end from the beginning and that He is the author of our vision and our dreams. And that He cares.
God cares about your everyday, your every minute, and if you allow Him to, He will use every single bit of it …
AND make you the most productive person in history.
(cue infomercial wrap up music and canned clapping and cheering audio)
