Over the long weekend I took a few hours to go outside with just me, my Bible and a notebook. I sat on the tree stump on the bank of a river, intent on reading Romans and reflecting on the past few months of my life.

After about a fifteen minutes of pure focus, a family of geese that had been steadily making their way towards me began to get too close to ignore. They looked at me. I looked at them. I turned my attention back to Romans only to look up a few verses later. And then again. And then again.

By the time I was in the thick of Romans 7, I finally put my Bible down and just watched them. Watched how the parents directed their young. Watched as the babies waddled among the rocks, picking at anything that looked edible. Watched as their necks stretched and contorted. Became fascinated to see them move and navigate the shore. Shortly after the geese finally left, a duck wandered by. And after the duck decided to float down the river, a pair of old men with their dogs meandered by, and after that the temperature dropped and it was cold and my legs fell asleep and I was hungry…

Romans remained relatively unread.

It struck me that despite doggedly trying to escape the distractions of life I had wandered into yet another world full of interesting things to look at. What had started as an escapade into nature in order to reconnect had become a descent into yet another tumult of stimuli.

I recall other times where I’ve sat in a room, or a chapel attempting to be silent, attempting to pray and found myself overwhelmed by how distracting the quiet is or how often someone else in the room sighs.

This is, unfortunately, just how it is I think. Regardless of where we are or what we’re doing there will be distractions. Loads of them. And when we do nothing to cultivate a sense of focus through our daily devotions and prayer life when God does show us time in our schedules to think and pray (like on beautiful Memorial Days) despite our best efforts we’ll have little recourse to give that time back to God.

Today, during my normal foray into the internet after a long weekend (read: too much to read and do) I ran across no less than three posts about how distracted we are.

• The first from NYmag.com defends distraction. I’d add that although it fails to really give credit to the necessity of knowing how to focus (ie being able to read an eight page article online), it’s quite intriguing in its defense of distraction as a lifestyle.
• The second, from Youth Specialties, is about the statement, “often we’re not as pressed for time as much as we feel we’re pressed for time.” It’s quite good.
• The third is from the CapeTown 2010 blog by Lausanne Pulse. It’s called Doing Or Being? and offers an important reflection on the distinction between the two.

By: Chris. This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.