focus

When I lose the focal point of my life- Christ Himself- nothing makes sense.

The world is so distracting. My attention jumps from one thing to the next throughout the day as I’m bombarded by sensory information and stimulation. Whatever I’m feeling one moment completely changes within the next hour; my thoughts are so scattered that I become a stranger to myself. My mind is going down one track, only to be interrupted and taken down a completely different route by changing circumstances and different ideas.

How do I focus this energy? How can I find a consistent thread to cling to, one that won’t be disturbed by everyday occurrences and crises? Something sustaining and lasting- something that transcends my schizophrenic experiences of the world.

I long to abide in Him completely.

I used to think the only way to do this was to physically escape- to physically remove myself from my circumstances and be alone with Him:

Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.

~Matthew 6:6 The Message

Certainly this is a powerful and grounding way to reconnect with Him- sometimes it is the only way- when you’re so absorbed in your own grievances and caught up in yourself that you need to stop everything and be still.

But what if we can do this in the course of our everyday lives… what if we learned how to continuously keep our attention and focus on Him so that we are never apart, even in the midst of the chaos of our lives?

In The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence encapsulates this idea. He lives in the presence of God, in everything He does. He offers his everyday life as a sacrifice before God. Although he is a simple kitchen worker and nothing about his work is inherently holy, he learns how to experience God through all of it.

Eugene Peterson also eloquently paraphrases this kind of life in Romans 12:1-2:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

The more we mature in God, the more we will feel the pull of a thousand opposite directions, from culture (the world), from our own flesh, and from the devil, trying to lead us astray and away from Him. The enemy does not want us to walk on the straight and narrow road- he wants to distract us. He’ll do everything he can to make us forget the Point of our existence and be caught up things that don’t have eternal value.

So we must keep our eyes fixed above, to the Author and Perfecter of our faith. There is no other way besides His way, and we can walk in it in the midst of our daily lives. We simply have to present everything we have and do before Him and allow Him to do what He wants with us.

A wise friend recently told me that everything God establishes in our life will stand, while everything else will fall away. This encouraged and reminded me that even as I try to establish my own kingdoms, they will only be temporary. Only the things of God will remain in my life as I continue to pursue Him. He will prune me as I go, stripping away all that is unnecessary and getting in the way of His purposes, refining me with His holy fire.

The path of righteousness is narrow, but it’s the only path I want to travel.