Report: Average Person Spends 27% Of Lifetime In the Way.
According to a study, the average person spends more than a quarter of his or her lifetime blocking doorways, meandering in the middle of sidewalks, standing in crowded aisles – all while being oblivious to those trying to move past them. The study didn’t include driving slowly in the fast lane, but I’ll bet that adds up as well.
This “study” was published by The Onion. Like all satire the invented statistics communicated an undercurrent of truth, and that got me thinking.
If we’re gonna get in the way anyway, we might as well be intentional about it. We might as well make it count.
Rather than standing around blocking doors and aisles and staring at our phones, maybe we ought to get in the way by following Jesus.
Maybe that surprises you, but Jesus got in the way a lot. He got in the way when He spent time with sinners. When He confronted religious leaders and their burdensome, human-created rules. When He flipped tables.
Lots of folks are attracted to the nice stuff Jesus says. Sounds good –
to act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God – as long as you don’t take it seriously and start doing stuff that gets in the way.
Standing for justice and setting thing right, by God’s standards, tends to upset the flow and turn things upside-down. The authorities, established religious and political leaders, don’t tend to like people and ideas that get in the way. They want tranquility and order, because that’s how you maintain power and control.
Caring about the kids at the HOME OF HOPE gets in the way. Rescuing and supporting them is messy. Riding bikes, sleeping on floors, training…it all gets in the way. It would be easier, less disruptive, to just leave things as they are
We could always go back to staring at our phones and blocking doorways.
Or you could visit our website and help us mess things up.