Do Not Disturb

I like hotel rooms.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my home and there’s no place like it. I do enjoy, however, the special attention of a quality hotel and a quality hotel room. It’s your own space and for those brief moments you can arrange it as you want. If you wish to leave things as they are, there’s even the opportunity to put up a Do Not Disturb sign warding off potential interlopers. (I can tell you, if I put up a similar sign at home, the dear cute innocent five year old daughter would blissfully ignore it.)

That ability to retain the state of affairs in your own space is priceless.

We were exploring some of the things that Jesus showed authority over in His earthly ministry.

Diseases, demonic possession, nature and hunger were just some of the things that were put under subjection to the Son of Man. It was a great time to consider how all this expressed how the Prince of Peace goes about His business.

Here He is knowing how God’s space should be arranged. He knows how relationships should be between man and God, between man and man as well as between man and nature. So when He sees anything that disturbs that He has the authority to point to the Do Not Disturb sign and the issue is removed. Whenever anything threatens the divine peace, His mission of service opens our eyes to the picture of how things were always meant to be.

We live in a world where so much threatens the peace of God. We can’t afford to strive for personal quiet in the face of communal unrest. We can’t afford to do nothing. What we don’t need to do either is make it personal and think our ingenuity will change things. What we do need is to be captured by a vision and practice of what it is to be a peacemaker. For they behave just like the Son of God – and usher in the peace of God by referring to that eternal sign:

Do Not Disturb.

For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden