Anyone who has driven the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway knows the sound of a tyre blowing out at speed and the unplanned stop on the hard shoulder that follows. Nobody schedules a breakdown, and it always seems to happen when you have somewhere else to be.
Many travellers on Nigeria’s highways, and on roads everywhere, have a story about a breakdown that put them in exactly the right place: helping a stranger change a tyre, overhearing a conversation that mattered, or simply not being where an accident happened further up the road. The interruption was infuriating at the time. Later it turned out to be the real appointment.
Scripture shows the same pattern again and again. Some of God’s most important appointments arrive as interruptions.
A Funeral at the Gate of Nain
Jesus was walking into the town of Nain with His disciples and a large crowd when they met another crowd coming out:
“And when He came near the gate of the city, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother; and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the city was with her. When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said to her, ‘Do not weep.'” (Luke 7:12-13, NKJV)
Nobody had arranged this meeting. Two crowds going in opposite directions met at a city gate, and Jesus stopped. In that unplanned moment a widow’s only son was raised from the dead (Luke 7:14-15).
Stopping on the Way to an Emergency
Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, came to Jesus because his twelve-year-old daughter was dying (Mark 5:22-23). Jesus went with him, and on the way, in the middle of that emergency, He stopped for someone else:
“Now a certain woman had a flow of blood for twelve years… When she heard about Jesus, she came behind Him in the crowd and touched His garment. For she said, ‘If only I may touch His clothes, I shall be made well.’… And He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your affliction.'” (Mark 5:25, 27-28, 34, NKJV)
By any ordinary logic, this was the worst possible time to stop. Jesus asked who had touched Him, waited for the woman to come forward trembling, and spoke a full blessing over her (Mark 5:30-34). While He was still speaking, word came that Jairus’s daughter had died (Mark 5:35). The delay had a real cost, and Jesus still went on to raise the girl (Mark 5:41-42). He was never in the hurry the people around Him expected.
From Revival to a Desert Road
Philip was in the middle of fruitful ministry in Samaria, where many were coming to faith (Acts 8:5-8), when an angel gave him an instruction that must have seemed like a step backwards:
“Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying, ‘Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ This is desert.” (Acts 8:26, NKJV)
He was told to leave a thriving ministry for an empty desert road, with no explanation. He went, and there he met an Ethiopian official reading Isaiah in his chariot, who believed and was baptised that day (Acts 8:27-38). Tradition holds that this man carried the gospel home to his own country.
Ten Minutes in a Corridor
Picture a doctor rushing between wards on a busy shift, already behind schedule, when an elderly patient in a corridor asks him to sit with her for a few minutes because she is frightened about an operation. Every instinct tells him to keep moving. He sits anyway, mostly listening, for about ten minutes. During that time he notices something in her breathing that nobody has recorded in her notes, and it leads to the early diagnosis of a serious complication that can then be treated in time. The ten minutes he resented losing turn out to be the most important part of his shift.
Not every interruption is from God, and some plans must be kept. But if we hold our schedules so tightly that we never stop, we may miss the appointments He has placed in our way. The next time something unplanned breaks into your day, pause before you push past it, and ask whether God might be in it.
