Remember Luke’s story about Jesus being invited to lunch by Martha and her sister, Mary. Luke says that Martha was distracted by many tasks; so she came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work? Tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Distracted by many things. That’s Martha. That is us. Probably most of us. Most of us because our culture is constantly swamped, distracted with information. Here’s how to look better, sleep better, exercise better. Here’s what’s going on in Africa, England, Ukraine, the campaign trail. You might be ruining your child forever if you fail to do this one crucial thing. The economy is good, no it’s bad, no it’s good. Click here to see the best states to retire in. Click here to see the twenty cutest cats in the world.
We are distracted by work. As the businessman who received a surprise visit from his 6-year-old daughter. He was on the phone when she came up to him and he put his arm around her. As he continued talking, his daughter softly exclaimed, “You’re holding me away!” He glanced and, indeed, he was holding her between his wrist and shoulder, holding her away, away from what was distracting him.
We are distracted by that which requires no true engagement. There is now a word in the dictionary called “phubbing.” It means maintaining eye contact while texting. Phubbing is a term coined as part of a linguistic experiment by Macquarie Dictionary to describe the habit of snubbing someone in favor of a mobile phone. Have you not glimpsed the couple at the restaurant, sitting at their table—both on their smart phones for half an hour? Distracted.
There is a 1986, clippedout Peanuts cartoon on the bulletin board of our Sunday school room. Lucy has just asked Linus if he has studied his Sunday school lesson. “I’m working on it. I’m practicing doing three things at once. All it takes is balance and coordination of which I happen to have plenty of both! See? I can read the lesson, button my shirt and slip my feet into my shoes all at the same time.” At that moment, Linus dramatically slips and falls, his lesson flies through the air, and one of the shoes lands on his head. Lucy picks up the lesson and reads it aloud: “Lesson for today, 2nd Samuel 1:19, ‘How the mighty have fallen’.”
What is it that is distracting you? From what are you being distracted? I cannot tell you what the Number One interest in your life is— any more than Jack Palance could in City Slickers. But, of course, this is meant to be a spiritual-of-sorts column so I will leave you with the words of a theologian.
Danish minister and author, Søren Kierkegaard, begins his work, Purity Of Heart Is To Will One Thing, with this prayer: “Father in Heaven! What is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving, could it even encompass a world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who art all! So may Thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing.”
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