Distraction

Distractions in our lives are important and need attention, but they are slippery and create disorder for us.  Distractions are deplored in many areas of lives and press us to lesser performance in many matters we care about in the course of a lifetime.  When I was younger I heard about the common tendency of elders to distraction.  When I reached that slippery slope I began to understand how true the perception is.  Starting out to do one thing, I catch the need to address another – then another.  At the conclusion of shifting objectives and activities one forgets what it was that he or she started out to do.  Turning to each new duty I find another, and turn to it – until I discovered what was happening and took firmer management of my thought and conduct.  When I don’t take charge, efficiency and achievement ratings decline.  A. W. Tozer was adamant in believing that distractions were the common enemies of prayer in persons.  As a sometime counselor of students and married couples I am almost forced to believe that distraction is a major cause of problems in knowing how to learn as a student or build an effective and loving family.  At one point I was so busy in my legitimate professional work and ministry that I was missing some of the matters of my family that only I could and should provide.  To the astonishment of colleagues I resigned eminent positions and moved 1400 miles away and started over.  Recently I was called by a gracious and fine Christian man, who recited the experience of divorce after the children were adults.  He and his wife worked at positions some distance from each other, touching down on the weekends, and planning for the future when they could live on retirement income.  She was distracted by a fellow worker, closed what had been a good marriage, and married the interloper.  Distraction!  We need education that includes these little foxes that creep in to spoil the fruitful vines that grow up in the days of our lives.

We are distracted by rivalries, perhaps sibling rivalries or parental rivalries.  We are distracted by all kinds of differences that plague us in our rigidities.  We are distracted by health issues that seem to take away our flexibility and consideration.  Habits that finally make addicts of us lead us to distraction from others, and loss of responsibility even to ourselves.  To be distracted from self will always lead to dissatisfaction and loss, including lost time.  One of the large distractions that curse the society is the ego of many competent persons.  Lincoln learned how to use his competent cabinet members, in bypassing their egos.  They seemed to be somewhat sophisticated men working for that honest ape-like man from out west.  For some he was honest Ape rather than honest Abe.  He didn’t much care for their jokes about him – just get the job done.  We remember him as one of the greats among our presidents.  He refused to be distracted.  I have heard repeated many times: whatever you do, do it with all your might.  Distractions leak away some of the strength that better things deserve of us: our attention, energies and time.  Read about the stories of distraction in Scripture: Adam and Eve in the garden; Terah on the way to the Promised Land; Lot’s wife pining for Sodom’s social life; Samson and his dalliances to tragic end; a king and a dance that cost the head of John the Baptist; and, the love of money (perhaps) that cost Judas his life.  The stories seem unending.  Those who kept the main thing as the main thing are known in the stories: of Abraham’s servant seeking Rebekah, of Jacob returning to his father’s house; of Ruth with Naomi, of Esther with Mordecai – and many others.  Of Esther the Scripture states that she: required nothing but . . . what the keeper of the women appointed.  We are wise to find pleasure in whatever God provides for us in the course of daily life.

We ought to fix our ideals on becoming the best persons we can become, the best in marriage, in parenting, in work, in faith, in habits that include a spate of matters – how we eat, how we groom, how we manage everything in our lives.  That means balance that refuses time-wasting distractions so to find time and learning for the right things.  No one manages all that perfectly, but many do it better than others – with less effort and resources than some others expect, perhaps demand.  None of the above is meant to take away from those relaxing times when we choose distraction deliberately so to recharge for the pursuit of the best context and environment for the good life.  So we take that vacation, with fun for the life game.