Brought to you by the Letter F

I found myself very distracted in church this morning, and it seemed that whatever was distracting me was one out of four “f” words (no not that “f” word). My mind kept wandering away to family, friends, future, or facebook. I started my drive to church thinking about my future, where my life is going, where God wants me, and when I’ll finally get married. These thoughts continued on into Sunday school. As the prayer requests were brought up, I began to drift into thoughts of my family and their needs. Then, I started to think about my friend, Shannon, and her upcoming wedding...which brought my thoughts back to the future and what I’d do in planning my own wedding. I started off the worship service thinking about facebook. I wondered whose birthdays were coming up, and I thought about how I needed to send an email to my cousin who decided to delete her facebook account. Then, my mind wandered on some more with my family, friends and future. Finally, I realized how I was letting myself drift away and was not paying attention to the message being preached. What did I do with this realization? Well, I thought of a fifth “f,” my followers on this blog. I came up with the idea for this entry and how I could put it into words. There are many other “f” words that tend to take our minds away or use up our free time (don’t worry, I thought of these after church): food, fun, failures, feelings, fantasies, fads, functions, Farmville…the list could go on and on and this is just one letter! Now it is kind of funny how I’m writing about how distracted I was, and even most of this very writing before your eyes was concocted within my distraction, but at the same time it reminds me of an “f” word I should have had a grip on. Focus.

Sometimes, or rather most of the time, it seems that I do find myself distracted by the worries of everyday life. I get so caught up in the wonderings and the wanderings of my circumstances that I forget about where my focus should be. God is just waiting for me to lift up these concerns and questions in prayer and let my mind rest in Him. Now, there’s nothing wrong with these “f” words, but when they take over your (my) priority list and leave God at the bottom, then something definitely needs to be fixed. I’ll leave you with some fitting verses I found…

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18, NIV)

“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2, KJV)