your world, interrupted

life passes us by.

that's a well-worn thought in poetry and philosophy, and i often revert back to it in introspection. but it seems to fly by faster the older i get. i'm turning 24 in june (it feels old to me), and carissa and i are expecting our first baby girl to arrive within the same month. and sometimes i just stand back and think, wow...how did this happen? it's already been 6 years since i graduated from high school! life is fleeting.

but then something happens. and life gets interrupted.

it may be the loss of a loved one, the pain involved in the destruction of a family, a sudden life-threatening illness, or maybe even a catastrophic event that shapes the course of history. life is just flying by casually when suddenly our world is rocked and interrupted. just as it was when the news of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 registered in our minds. all the things that we were concerned with and looking forward to that day were suddenly put on hold. it was as if our whole world just stopped. and life would never be the same.

well, last week we experienced an event that was completed in less than a minute, and hardly classifies as catastrophic, but nonetheless woke me up to reality.

i was rudely awaken by my mattress shaking me and tossing me back and forth. i initially thought carissa must be having a hard time getting up to go the bathroom. apparently she was thinking the same of me. then in a daze it hit us...someone's in our room! so both of us sprang up to see who had snuck into our house to attack us in bed. but there was no one there. then we heard the rattle of dishes in the kitchen and realized that the entire house was shaking significantly.

no way...we're in indiana. we don't have earthquakes in indiana!

so when the shaking subsided, i leaped out of bed and rushed to the tv convinced that we had been bombed and i would turn on the news to see most of ohio blown off the map (hey, ohio's the "heart of it all").

well, needless to say, i survived my first earthquake. (and just so you know, i'm not crazy...the nurse at our doctor's office thought it was aliens...but yes, i've had to face a certain degree of ridicule for my initial assumptions)

but nothing was broken. and californians would laugh at the naivete and enthusiasm in which we hoosiers responded to such a minor occurrence. but it's indiana for crying out loud!! and i already admitted that the incident was hardly catastrophic, but carissa and i just laid in bed talking about it afterward.

ya know, we put so much effort into all our stuff. accumulating, enhancing, protecting. and we get so comfortable with life, but God is fully capable of rocking our world...even the very ground beneath us! God can interrupt our world whenever He wants.

and it reminded me of matt. 24:42-44, where Jesus tells us to "be ready" because we do not know when He's coming back. at any moment, God can put everything on hold and reveal the vanity in our lives by interrupting this world and changing history forever.

and i wonder, am i going to be interrupted? or am i going to be ready? will He find me diligently and passionately pursuing Him and awaiting His return, or will He find me chasing after the wind?

so be ready. because very soon our world will be interrupted.