A Closer Walk

Pauses. There are times when our loving Heavenly Father gives us a pause in our life. A broken bone, some sickness or injury where we must take time off to heal the broken or injured part. Now we have time that we didn't have before because we are off work or need to sit down a spell. These pauses can be beneficial. Both to us and to others.
One such historical pause happened about two thousand years ago. The Apostle Paul was imprisoned in Rome. He was held in that prison for over two years. He couldn't leave, or go anywhere. Because of that it would seem that the gospel being spread would suffer. So Paul had a pause thrust upon him. What to do, what to do. Since he couldn't go visit them he wrote letters to three of the churches he had started in various towns. The church at Ephesus, the church at Philippi, and the church at Colossae. Oh, and he took time to write a personal letter to a man that Paul had led to Christ named Omesimus. The letter was about Onesimus' runaway slave named Philemon. If you check your Bible you will find the books of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.
Did Paul set out to write Scripture? Probably not. He was just doing what he could because of the need of the moment. During his pause. How about us? Do we look at pauses as an intrusion on our life that we didn't plan or want? Perhaps we do sometimes. But remember, "I am the Lord, and there is no one else...So that people may know from the rising to the setting of the sun That there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no one else, The one forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating disaster; I am the Lord who does all these things," Isaiah 45:5-7 NASB. And also, "But it greatly displeased Jonah, and he became angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, 'Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore, in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that Thou art a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity,'" Jonah 4:1-2 NASB.
When we do experience a pause in our life, who engineered that? Who chose the timing? And the cause of the, you know, pause? So what would be a reason for the Lord God to bring a pause our way? Here are some thoughts. Perhaps our schedule is so busy and full that it is about to burst at the seams. Maybe our Father in Heaven knows that we need a break. A time to decompress so to speak. It could be that we need to re-focus our thinking and our efforts away from the frivolous and toward the important. Professional athletes experience a pause when they have an injury that prevents them from playing their game. Do they want to be on the sidelines in street clothes rather than on the field or court in their uniform? Of course not! But sometimes even they must take a pause.
When our Lord allows a pause in our life we shouldn't fight it. If we are under doctor's orders we should do what we are told when we are told to do it. Our job now that we are off work is to get well, or better so that we can return to work. And that means following doctor's orders. Going to rehab. Taking the medications as directed. Wearing the sling or the brace. In other words, doing what we are told when we are told to do it.
Remember that the God of All Creation can set an obstacle. Or He can remove an obstacle. As long as we didn't do something stupid to get us here (God can help with that also), things will work out the way our Lord desires them to, and we will be better for it.
"But now, O Lord, Thou art our Father, we are the clay, and Thou our potter; And all of us are the work of Thy hand," Isaiah 64:8 NASB.