Tag Archives: Distraction

Chapter-a-Day

Finishing Well

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…so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?”
Nehemiah 6:3 (NIV)

It’s Friday morning. Where did the week go? I confess that when I woke at 5:00 this morning to continue writing and moving my book project forward, I felt a strong desire to roll over. I’m finishing up the sixth of eight chapters in the manuscript. I can see the finish line. Sometimes the hardest part of a project is getting through the long slog in the middle. I’m feeling it.

I love it when I read the morning’s chapter and it’s as if God tailored it for this exact moment in time. As I waded into Nehemiah’s wall building project, I found him at exactly the same place I am. The wall is nearing completion. The doors and gates have yet to be placed and set, but the 2.5 mile long wall that was 40 feet tall and eight feet thick has been repaired and restored.

Jerusalem’s enemies have not given up on thwarting the project but they have switched tactics. Threats of attack didn’t work, so now they turn to deception. First they try to lure Nehemiah to a “meeting” under a false pretense of working out their differences. Next, they send a false messenger with a made up story hoping to lure Nehemiah into doing something they use as bad press against him.

Once again, Nehemiah displays characteristics that have made him the right man for this job and are the foundations of this projects success.

Focus. Nehemiah refuses to get distracted from the task at hand. We live at a time when endless distraction sits in the palm of our hand and is never more than an arm’s reach away. Nehemiah’s response to his detractors provides a great example for me to follow. “I’m focused on a great project! Why should I allow myself to be distracted?” I find it interesting that they requested a meeting four times and four times he had to repeat himself. The temptations of distraction don’t go away. Dogged determination is required to stay focused.

Faith. Prayer has been ever present in Nehemiah’s story. Nehemiah was always talking to God, asking for God’s help, and affirming his trust in God’s strength and provision. In today’s chapter, Nehemiah’s popcorn prayer is a simple one I could bear to repeat like a mantra in my current long slog and in the midst of every challenging stretch of this earthly journey: “Now strengthen my hands.”

Finishing Well. By the end of today’s chapter, the wall is completed. Nehemiah’s focus and faith led to the wall being rebuilt in a miraculous 52 days. It’s one thing to start a wall; it’s another to complete it. Faithfulness isn’t measured by enthusiasm at the beginning but by integrity at the end.

I’m drawing inspiration and motivation from Nehemiah’s success in the quiet this morning. The finish line is still sitting out there on the horizon for my current project. Nevertheless, I’m glad I rolled out of bed this morning instead of rolling over. The slog continues. I need to stay focused.

“Now, Lord, strengthen my hands.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Chapter-a-Day

The Sober Truth

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The Sober Truth (CaD Heb 9) – Wayfarer

Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many…
Hebrews 9:27-28a (NIV)

This past week I began listening to an audiobook recommended by a friend, entitled Imagine Heaven by John Burke. The author was a self-avowed skeptic who spent some 30 years gathering and studying stories from all over the world of those who have had a Near Death Experience (NDE); Individuals who were clinically dead, briefly experienced what comes next, and then were sent back.

Here’s the truth: I’m dying. I’m not sure I could begin my week with a more sobering observation, but it is true. According to the scientists who study these things, I reached the pinnacle of my physical development between 25 (muscle strength) and 30 (bone mass). From that point forward, despite the fact that I am probably more fit for my age than I was back then, my body is in slow but steady decline. Fortunately, the mind, psyche, and spirit can still grow and develop through the life journey despite my brain processing power peaking at age 18. Nevertheless, I cannot escape the fact that my body is making a persistent and irreversible descent towards death.

In today’s chapter, the author of Hebrews continues to compare the covenant and sacrificial system that God prescribed for Moses and the Hebrew people to the new covenant established by Jesus through His sacrificial death. At the beginning of the Great Story, Adam and Eve’s sin ushered in the reality of death:

“By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
    since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
    and to dust you will return.”
Genesis 3:19 (NIV)

From the beginning, humanity has, by and large, fought death, feared death, and sought to escape death. Along my life journey, I’ve observed that most people living a life of relative wealth, freedom, and affluence tend to distract themselves from thinking about it at all. Some are so enamored with the distractions that their indulgence leads to the very thing they were trying to distract themselves from thinking about. Then I’ve observed a few are so dissatisfied, wearied, or wounded that they prefer death to empty distractions.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself thinking about death as a follower of Jesus. Today’s chapter lays out quite plainly that Jesus suffered His horrific death in fulfillment of a once-and-for-all sacrifice that not only made Moses’ old sacrificial system obsolete, it completely transforms my perception of death. Jesus taught that death is the gateway to Life. Death is no longer something I need to fight but something to welcome. It is no longer something to fear, but to celebrate. It is no longer something to escape, but to embrace. The many testimonies of those who experience NDEs concur. One of the common themes of those who were given a taste of heaven is the fact that they didn’t want to come back.

If I truly believe what I say I believe, and death is not something I need to fear or ignore via distraction, how does that inform what I do with my life today? For me, I find that it frees me to live more intentionally with the eternal in mind. My physical descent towards earthly death is ultimately leading toward an ascent to eternal life. My purpose each day on this earthly path of descent is to love God with everything I’ve got while loving others as I love myself as Jesus laid out as the way of trust, lament, humility, justice, compassion, right motive, peacemaking, surrender, and radical love.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Creation Contemplation

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Creation Contemplation (CaD Ps 104) – Wayfarer

May my meditation be pleasing to him,
    as I rejoice in the Lord.
Psalm 104:34 (NIV)

Among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers, we’ve been asking a lot of questions about distractions and attachments. Primarily, we’re asking ourselves some introspective questions regarding just how attached we are to our phones, tablets, and screens. And, how do those screens and the how the limitless amount of information and entertainment, literally at our fingertips, is forming us. While it might be easy to perceive this as some religious Luddite rail against technology, it’s really an attempt to ask some very sincere, personal questions about time, thought, habits, distractions, and Spirit.

Yesterday our Scottish crew (still stranded by COVID in America) was discussing the fact that back home in Edinburgh they would be spending a lot more time outside in the more temperate winter climate of the UK. Here in the snow and midwest deep-freeze of Iowa (-2 F this morning), that’s just not an enjoyable possibility. So there’s been a tremendous amount of screentime for the wee one as four adults try to work.

Today’s chapter, Psalm 104, is ancient Hebrew song of praise. The theme is the wonder of creation, and this is a great song for anyone who is fed spiritually by being out in nature. What is it that feeds your awe and wonder of the natural world? I know for a lot of people it’s the mountains. For me, it’s always been water. I love being on a ship out on the ocean, a sailboat, or even sitting on the dock in the morning at the lake. There is something spiritual and life-giving to sit in the quiet, to take it in, and to have undistracted time to think, ponder, dream, and meditate.

What’s really cool about Psalm 104 is the thought with which the songwriter structured his lyrics. This is obvious to the casual reader, but when you break it down, it’s really genius. It’s structured like concentric circles moving out from the center (like the expanding universe?), and as the stanzas move out from the center they are connected thematically:

Praise

Three Verses: Celebrating the celestial world above the earth

Five Verses: The earth’s foundations and boundaries

Nine Verses: The diversity and abundance of life on earth

Five Verses: The earth’s cycles and rhythms

Three Verses: Celebrating the nautical world below the earth

Praise

As I meditated on this in the quiet this morning… (Actually, it wasn’t quiet. I had a three-year-old watching a YouTube of Transformer toys on my lap.)… I couldn’t help but think about the thought the songwriter put in to not only write a song about creation, but also craft it so that the whole song’s structure was another layer of metaphor that speaks to the design, order, and structure of the universe.

There is something so beautiful in this that was worth my time this morning with which to sit and meditate. It motivated me to whisper my own quiet prayer of praise for creation that’s all around me.

I also couldn’t help but be reminded of these questions Wendy and I have been asking ourselves about the things to which we are attached, the things that distract us, and the limitless information and entertainment waiting for me there on the phone, the tablet, the television, and the laptop. I can go down the online rabbit hole so quickly and become immersed in a world of information that offers me little or no spiritual benefit.

Or, I can be mindful of making different choices. Which is what I’m endeavoring to do today.

Chapter-a-Day

Spirit Spring and Personal Cistern

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They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns
Jeremiah 2:13 (NIV)

Wendy and I came home from our cruise a week ago with a mixture of emotions. We’ve done some debriefing about it together this past week. As I admitted in my recap, our time aboard fell into a very simple (and some would say “boring”) routine. We read a lot. We watched movies in our room. We sat by the pool in the warm sun. We only went to one of the big stage shows they offer in the evenings. We only truly explored one of the four ports of call. The daily list of activities we could enjoy was mind-boggling, but we pretty much ignored it all. We didn’t want endless activity. We have that at home.

On one hand we truly enjoyed the rest, the warmth, and the break from routine. We enjoyed being together as we always do. It was quiet and peaceful. At the same time, we both came home feeling that our Spirit-tank was empty. Independent of one another, we had thoughts of some thing on which we wanted to ponder and dig into. We had plans for journaling, meditating, seeking, and conversation together. We thought the downtime would afford us the opportunity to dig deep from a spiritual perspective. In retrospect, we didn’t do that, nor did we really even talk about it before we left.

In today’s chapter, Jeremiah’s prophetic poetry is pointed at his own people. He offers a word picture that leapt off the page for me in the quiet this morning. They had access to God’s “spring of living water,” but chose to dig their own cisterns instead. Yeah. I get that. I kind of feel like that with our missed opportunity a few weeks ago.

That confessed, I’m not beating myself up about this. It is what it is. It was a restful week and an enjoyable getaway. Nevertheless, it has served as a reminder for me. The line between “surface” and “Spirit” is an important one. Drinking from the spring of Living Water is not the same as drinking from the well-dug cistern of personal satisfaction.

Chalk up another lesson for the journey. I’m going to do it differently the next time we getaway together for a time of rest.

Have a good week, my friends.

Chapter-a-Day

Driven to Distraction

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They sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner.
Nehemiah 6:4 (NRSV)

For the last couple of years our local gathering of Jesus’ followers have been encouraged to pray about and choose a word that will be a theme for their year. My word for this year is “focus.”

Focus has been an interesting theme as I celebrate my half-century in this life journey, as an empty nest offers increased margins of time and resources, and as I am meditating on the reality of being on the downhill side of this life journey. I am ever and increasingly mindful that while my margins may have expanded in the micro sense, in the macro sense I am working with slowly depleting resources of time and energy.

We’re now almost half-way through the year and I’ve been spending some moments meditating on how my focus is going.  I have to confess that it’s not good. As I think about how I need and desire to focus my time, energy, and resources I find that life serves up a never-ending stream of distractions. I am so easily distracted in a million different ways. Between social media, technology, entertainment, television, games and events there is an endless supply of good and fascinating things on which I can focus my time and attention.

In today’s chapter, Nehemiah is desperately trying to focus on the project he’s been called to complete. He wants to get the wall rebuilt and the gates in place. He’s close to having the job done. Now, he is repeatedly harassed by critics and enemies who want to meet with him. He’s attacked with slander and gossip which requires him to address the lies and rumors. His life is threatened and he’s urged to sequester himself in the temple to be safe. Distractions. Distractions. Distractions.

Nehemiah’s response to these distractions was consistent. First, he took everything to God. He prayed for the work on which he needed to focus, and asked for God’s strength. He handed his troubles and enemies over to God and relegated justice to higher authority. And, he stayed focused on the work.

At the end of today’s chapter:

So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month Elul, in fifty-two days. And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem; for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.

Today, I’m thinking again about my focus. The great thing about having a theme or a goal is that it becomes a point of reference. I may get off course or distracted, but simply having “focus” as my word of the year keeps calling me back from distraction. I can’t do anything about what’s past, but I have a new day, a clean day in front of me. And, on June 21 in Iowa, it’s a long day.

Time to focus.

Chapter-a-Day

Closer than I Realize

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Surely, this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you, nor is it too far away.
Deuteronomy 30:11 (NRSV)

There were often times when the girls were quite small that I would quietly be present observing and watching over them. They were oblivious to my presence, their attention drawn to shiny things, new things, and the struggle to stand and walk. Their eyes and hearts were fixed on the exploration of the world that existed just 0-24 inches from the ground. There I hovered, quietly watching and wordlessly removing dangerous objects from their path before they got there. I was intent on their growth, their maturity, and their well-being. In the moment, they had no idea.

I remember the early days of my faith journey. I had decided to follow Jesus and it all seemed so new and unexpected. At the same time, I began to look back with unveiled eyes and to realize all of the ways that my Heavenly Father had been there all along. I could, in retrospect, see how things had been ordered to bring me to this place without my even knowing it.

In today’s chapter, Moses reminds God’s people that the things of God are “not too hard” nor are they “too far away.” So often I, like a small child, allow my eyes and heart to be captivated by shiny things, new things, and those things which exists just 0-72 inches from the ground. My Heavenly Father, crowded out of my vision and consciousness, is ever-present and intent upon my protection, my growth, and my maturity, even when I am oblivious in the moment.

Today, I am thankful that God, and all that God has to offer, is closer and more easily accessible than I perceive or believe in the moment.

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Chapter-a-Day

“Stay the Course. Eyes on Me.”

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You must follow exactly the path that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you are to possess.
Deuteronomy 5:33 (NRSV)

Some mornings as I read the chapter there is a message that is just for me; A word that speaks directly to the moment I am in at that particular waypoint on life’s journey. This morning was one of those mornings.

We are a fickle culture with short attention spans. What’s trending on Twitter today will be a long forgotten memory in a few days, or even hours. We are inundated with competing messages broadcast from countless media outlets and sources all vying for our attention. The result is that I am constantly distracted.

There is so much available to me at my finger tips through the myriad of screens in my life. If I don’t like this show I can switch to that channel, or watch YouTube, or Vimeo, or stream Netflix. If I’m bored with Facebook I can check Twitter, or Pinterest, or my blog reader. If I don’t like the music on Spotify, I can always look for a playlist on Amazon Prime or turn SonicTap on the television, or I can always go retro and actually turn on a radio. The opportunities for distraction are mind-numbingly endless.

How does this affect my spirit? My thinking? My life?

I fear that it is becoming far too easy for me to lose constancy, fidelity, and focus. When I spiritually experience an obstacle in life’s road, I immediately assume there’s an alternate route that will be faster and easier. Instead of sticking to the path to which I’m called, I’m distracted by all the other paths leading off to who knows where. Instead of focusing on the task at hand I’d rather focus on my iPhone, my iPad, my smart TV, or something else, and then another something else, and then another something else.

This morning, in the quiet of my home office, God whispered to my spirit: “Stay the course. Don’t turn to the right or left. Eyes on me.”

 

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featured photo:  Blake Patterson via Flickr

Chapter-a-Day

Chapter-a-Day Deuteronomy 27

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Moses and the Levitical priests addressed all Israel: Quiet. Listen obediently, Israel. Deuteronomy 27:9 (MSG)

I came back from a business trip to Grand Island last week with a nasty little head cold. The cold did a number on my energy level and for the past four nights I’ve slept particularly long and hard. The result is that I’ve risen an hour or two (or three) later than normal and that has thrown my routine off significantly. My body is recuperating, but I feel my soul getting out of sorts.

I’m a morning person. I always have been. I drove my parents crazy because I wouldn’t sleep in. For years, I have channeled my early rising nature in positive ways. I normally spend a couple of hours each morning in my home office in uninterrupted quiet. I pray. I read. I write my chapter-a-day post. I listen.

The cacophany of noise around us continues to grow unabated. Television, cell phone, radio, iPods, DVDs, Netflix, YouTube, iTunes, MP3 players, and Blu-Ray discs. We are plugged in, tuned in, surfing, chatting, texting, and tweeting. Not one of these things is a bad thing. I sometimes wonder, however, about the cumulative effect of all the noise around us.

My time of quiet each morning is like a way-station in the journey. It recharges my spiritual batteries as I unplug from the noise and take the time to listen for God’s still, small voice whispering to my soul deep within. When I don’t have that time of quiet in the morning, I begin to notice in the way my spirit gets brittle and edgy during the day.

I believe that we all need regular doses of quiet in our lives. It’s as important, if not more important, today as it was when God demanded it of Moses’ followers thousands of years ago. Quiet doesn’t happen regularly unless I make it happen. Sometimes, like the past few days, my bodies need for recuperative rest takes precedence over my morning quiet time. It’s only reminded me, however, how much I need it.

Shhhhhh. Listen.