Life Meets Faith: Interruptions from God

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Maybe you've seen an episode or more of Joan of Arcadia, the 2003-2005 TV series. In it the main character, Joan Girardi (Amber Tamblyn), hears and sees God.

Direct communication with God is what she has in common with another Joan, an older one, Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc claimed to have visions from God in early 1400s. Her visions led her to believe that God wanted her to lead an attack to rid France of the English. The English claimed that they ought to rule France and had the French city of Orleans under siege. Joan, only 19, persuaded the French monarch to send her to Orleans.

There, she overcame the skepticism of the French commanders and within nine days put an end to the siege. Eventually, the French drove out the English, putting an end to the Hundred Years' War. Joan of Arc, however, did not do so well. An armed group captured her and sold her to the English. In 1431, she was burned at the stake. On the other hand, she is now an official Catholic saint.

Joan Girardi's adventures are not as risky. God appears to her in ordinary guises. Among them, a cute male student, a frecklefaced pre-teen, an equipment operator, a cafeteria server. Each of them has a task for Joan to perform. In one episode, she has to build a boat. In another, she joins her high school cheerleaders.

Joan does not understand why God wants her to do what is being asked of her. She obviously does not know how to build a boat and has no cheerleading genes. But as each episode unfolds, she begins to see what God had in mind. Sometimes Joan ends up helping her brother deal with his disability; he can't walk because of injuries from a car crash.

I don't know what the writers for Joan of Arcadia were thinking. But the show raises at least one great question. Is God trying to interrupt our busyness and get us to realize that we need to care about the person sitting next to us in the classroom, the teacher or a family member?

Joan does not like to have her life interrupted by God. She wants to focus on her studies, appearance and friends. She does not like God filling her life with do-good projects that she does not understand.

Probably most of us can relate. We see a family member or a friend in trouble. Could this be God interrupting our own busyness in a way that we don't like? Maybe we don't have anyone coming up to us as Joan does, claiming to be God and giving us direct instructions. But perhaps the voice of God can still be heard when we see people around us who are in trouble.

And really, who isn't in some kind of trouble? We're all in some kind of difficulty; it's just that some difficulties are more obvious than others and, of course, some difficulties are more intense while others are hidden. In fact, most of us have learned to hide our troubles. We like to appear in control and strong.

Some years ago when I was a chaplain at Fanshawe, one of the students who I would see often had a disability that made it very difficult for her to walk. The other members of the student group had no mobility problems.

The one thing we did have though was a silent understanding that we needed to keep an eye out for Jane (not her real name), making sure to walk a little slower and taking the time to offer her rides when plans for offcampus activities were being made. In return we were blessed by her cheerfulness, prayers and spirit of "I can do this!"

God didn't show up disguised as the janitor to tell us to pay a little more attention to Jane than to students who had no mobility issues. But I think we all knew that he was interrupting our conventional ways. And we all understood what he was telling us to do.

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