Does your mind leap from one thing to another?
Has your mind made yet another leap since you started reading?
Have you often found yourself restless in prayer?
Not quite like going cold-turkey from a busy life, but not far off either!
Is it a triumph when concentration exceeds 20 seconds?
Do the thoughts of what needs doing cruise through your mind like an F1 racing car?
Or do they meandre like a cow slowly chewing the cud?
Martin Luther was taking a break from the Reformation (like you do) and decided to get his hair cut. His barber asked him a question whilst he sat there under the blade, “How do you pray?” – the great reformer wrote a forty page response to his ‘lowly’ questioner.
Here’s a snippet:
“A good clever barber must have his thoughts, mind and eyes concentrated upon his razor and the beard and not forget where he is in his stroke and shave. If he keeps talking or looking around or thinking of something else (however important), he is likely to cut a man’s nose or mouth or throat. So anything that is to be done well ought to occupy the whole man with all his faculties and members. As the saying goes: he who thinks of many things thinks of nothing and accomplishes no good. How much more must prayer possess the heart exclusively and completely if it is to be good prayer?”
This is good advice to us in our short attention span age, distracted from one second to the next with all manner of things that will keep us from Christian basics, such as prayer. Prayer that “occupies the whole [person]” is a challenge that people who call themselves “Christians” must surely wrestle with. Multi-tasking is not a virtue, even though our culture tells us it is.
I know I need this advice. I know we likely all do.
(Picture: ‘Barbier Deutschland “Hofampterspiel” for King Ladislas “Posthumus”, c. 1455)
Distracted!
Not attracted, distracted!!
Ah! These modern days, we’re so busy.
We distract ourselves with microchip and 4G;
We always think it’s all about me.
I’m multi-tasking; I’m so modern.
That flicker of light, our mobile we delight!
We pick up up everything,
Before us, and in us.
We reach, we pick up, we….distract ourselves.
Did someone just text me?
Check my phone!
Did someone just Facebook me?
Check my phone.
Are my kids talking to me…..check my phone!
We are a distracted people.
A picking up people.
Let us pick up our phone, our facebook, our TV guide;
But let us not be Christian inside.
We think we’re free, but really we hide;
From the terror inside, the distraction we hide.
What do they think?
What did he say?
Who gives a damn, anyway?
Jesus said, “Pick up your cross.”
Not the dross, that is your boss;
Not the phone you think you own;
Nor the life that you’ve blown.
But the cross, from new life grown.
You don’t have to pick up the shit; take the hit.
Pick up the Cross;
It’s not your loss.
You lose your life, in His strife;
Come to Me, said He; Be free.
Distracted! Attracted!
What are you picking up anyway?
Your phone, the TV guide, the Facebook like?
Your own little ego, fed every day….
…on the things that don’t fill; anesthetized will.
Pick up your Cross and follow Me!
That means putting everything else down;
It means no longer following self.
Check yourself now,
Do you have the courage?
Do you?
Really?
I think I can hear your phone ringing……….
