It's 2013. Distractions are everywhere. It could be the latest new phone or tablet, music, sports, or the policies of a president that doesn't know his head from his ass (This reminds me of the scene from "A League of Their Own" when Tom Hanks is chewing out a player in the dugout and asks her where her head is, and then he answers his own question with "It's that lump that's three feet above your ass!" Makes me laugh every time. Ah good times). Anyway, there are a lot of things that can grab our attention and take us away from, or dare I say it, lead us closer to God. That may seem strange but let me explain.
So first, let's talk about how we let distractions get in our way. There are millions of things going on around us at all times. We have jobs, school, families, entertainment, politics, and a bunch of other things that vie for our attention. And none of these things are in and of themselves bad. You want to watch a movie or read the paper...great. But it's when we let these things take away from our prayer and our duties as Christians that hurt us. If we are not spending quality and quantity time in prayer, and let these other things dictate how we spend our time, then we are doing a disservice to God and to our relationship with Him.
But you know this. Anybody that has ever tried to put in a holy hour knows all about distractions and the difficulties of focusing on prayer. Let's talk about what to do with those distractions. The first is a distraction that is not of God. So say you're praying with Scripture and focusing in on the sermon on the mount and all of the sudden you start thinking about lunch in an hour or have this vivid vision of the Stay Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters. Yeah, probably not from God. What you have to do at this point is ask God for the grace to take away the distraction so that you can turn your attention back to the passage and refocus on prayer.
But what about other distractions? For example, I was reading this reflection this morning and it had to do with remaining in the presence of God throughout the week and trusting in Him to navigate everything that is going on. Great! However, I could not take my mind off Courtney. See, we are starting to heavily discern our vocations and seeing if we are in the right place for the long haul, and when to get the ball rolling on an engagement and everything else that is involved (WOOF!!!). I had already spent some time praying on this earlier, but it just kept coming up and I was being "distracted."
This is what we call a good distraction. God was placing this huge thing on my mind for a reason. I tried fighting it off time and time again, but it kept popping up. I have been told before that if something comes into your head three times during a holy hour, God probably wants you to pray on it. In this case, Jesus was seeking out the greater good. Yes, praying about staying in His presence is great, but Jesus wanted me to focus my attention on another thing, and that was this discernment process. This is just another example of the greatness of God. I was trying to pray and focus on the relationship with Him, and He would rather have me thinking about Courtney and our relationship so that I could even more give it back to Him. What a guy!
So to sum up, distractions are everywhere. Some are good (discerning a vocation) and some are bad (worrying about the incompetence of our lousy president). The trick is making sure you can distinguish between the two, and then following the greater good. And don't get discouraged when you feel distracted and find it difficult to focus. Jesus is allowing this to build you up. If you can get over this hurdle, then Jesus will trust you with more and that's a great thing. Trust that God knows what He is doing because you know...He's God.
In Christ,
Josh
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