‘Have you got a minute?’ The value and dangers of interruptions

I don’t know how many times someone has asked, ‘Have you got a minute?’, when of course they meant 30 or 40 minutes at least. Sometimes a conversation ensues about a person’s concerns, perhaps wanting guidance or support, or maybe a difference of opinion that needs to be resolved.

Interruptions are the stuff of daily life and without them our days would be all too predictable and boring. Yet they can also be a real problem. Literally or figuratively, there are times when we need to shut the door and focus on what we are doing or what we need, rather than what someone else thinks is important.

That’s a basic issue here: in all sorts of situations, it is easy to mistake the immediate for the important.  The phone rings and almost always we pick it up—we respond to the immediate as if it is the most important thing for us to do at that time. It helps a lot today that we can put our phones on silent mode.

The distinction between the immediate and the important raises the question of priorities. To continue with my example, presumably when the phone rings we are doing something else: and the question might then be which is our priority.

Interruptions presuppose that we are doing something which is interrupted, whether it is work or other activities. How we see and respond to interruptions is actually quite an important and sometimes difficult matter. It can be exhausting trying to achieve our own priorities if we are constantly interrupted—and yet we may also deeply value being with and available to others.

I have never forgotten something I read when I was a student, in a book by the French Catholic priest Michel Quoist. I think it was in his book Christian Response,  and it was a short meditation on being busy and responding to people when you had lots of other things to do. He wrote in the first person, to the person asking for his time: ‘Yes, I do have other things, but right now I have twenty minutes for you, and for those twenty minutes I am completely with you.’ (These are not the exact words, but very close to them.) To allow an interruption, we need intentionally to give ourselves to that thing, for a specific and limited time. And then return to our other priorities.

This requires a clear sense of balance and priorities, recognizing the value and importance of the person who wants ‘a minute’, but also valuing our own work and preserving energy and time for that. Maintaining that balance is a skill and discipline which is well worth working on.

I don’t recall when I first read the suggestion that in the Gospels, many of the most important incidents and sayings of Jesus arose from interruptions. He was going somewhere and a person asked him to visit their home, as a child was ill, or someone called out to him for healing, and so on. These incidents are crucial to the portraits of Jesus and show his availability for those people, many of whom were the ‘outcasts’ of society.

But it should also be noted that he was interrupted whilst doing something else or going somewhere. He had his own agenda or priorities. He was not just hanging about waiting to be interrupted, as it were.

I’ve always found valuable insight in the story found toward the end of Mark Chapter 1. The narrative places Jesus in the town of Capernaum and we could say that he was having a very successful time. He was teaching in the synagogue, a place set up for that purpose, and people were ‘astounded’ at his authoritative style, when a person said to be ‘possessed by an evil spirit’ challenged him. When Jesus healed that man, the people were further astonished and his reputation spread, so much so that well into the evening crowds of people came to him for healing and guidance.

Early next morning he disappeared, going out to a lonely place to be alone for a time. His followers found him and urged him to get back there … so much more need and opportunity, and no doubt they were enjoying it as well. People were happy, relieved, finding new hope.

But Jesus declined, saying that he must go on to other places as well, as this is what he had come to do.

I have wondered about this decision. How can you leave a place where you know there is more need and more receptivity, more opportunity to care for people?

My conviction is that this decision is one of trust: the ‘leaven’ as Jesus once called it, of hope and healing, renewed relationships and community, can do its own work. It was up to the people there now to share it. He was not going to do it all for them, all day, every day, and only for them.

There were interruptions, but also he had his own agenda, to go to other places and bring hope to them too.

Interruptions and priorities—and the sense that we cannot do it all, ever. We live with the hope and trust that the good we can do will bear some fruit, it will do its own work, and can achieve far more than we would even if we tried to do it all.

I do have a minute and I can give that, amidst my own limited ability, priorities and needs, and for the rest of it, I must trust in the providence of life and all creation. So may it be.