Steve-o's Devo's: Focus, focus, focus....

Think about how you spend your day for a moment. How much of your day is spent in motion without really thinking about what you are doing? From the moment we get up until we head back to sleep in the evening, much of our life can be a series of generic moments that blur casually from one activity to the next.

Most of the day is spent performing the tasks of our vocation. Some of that time is spent dealing with the everyday physical needs that our body requires. But what about the rest of the time? What do we do to keep our focus on the important things of life?

I read an article this past weekend about how difficult things are getting for us here with the increased costs of living (i.e. gas--the media's latest crisis). But one comment really struck me. A woman, now in her 80s, commented that she did not know what all the fuss was about. After all, she lived through World War II when the country was forced to ration meat, gas, and a variety of items that you needed to save coupons for in order to get. Then you had to decide what you truly needed before using up what you had saved for all those days/weeks. She said that folsk today just don't know what it means to sacrifice things and that we are too concerned about what things we have rather than what we really need.

This comment struck me because it made me wonder about how we can currently be a part of a specific group based on what we own rather than who we are. For the last half century, people have worked hard to try and segment us into specific market niches, a special grouping can create synergy for a product and then the product can be re-marketed to another segment of the population. You can see this happen with brand loyalty or a particular store loyalty. The Gap is one great example of a company trying to re-engage its 1990s customers with new children--the Baby Gap is born! Of course, many of those returning customers discover that the Gap no longer makes clothes that fit their new middle-aged shapes!

But we have had a period of time in our history when we could get whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted. We might like the diversity of options available to us, but while so many things try to appeal to different things, we lose sight of who we are...and much of the time of whose we are. The focus on our wants, transformed in our thinking into "needs" has significantly altered the way all of us spend our time and money. So what does this have to do with God?

Paul writes in Romans 8 (linked above for you to check out) about this--funny how things stay the same the more the look like they have changed! Paul points out that when we spend all of our time focused on our selves, obsessed with our own way of living and making sure that we try to live it, we rarely get a chance to really live. If it takes all our time and energy to try to show the world who we want to be, it leaves little room for living out who we really are. Ultimately, Paul notes that if we spend all our time worrying about our selves, we spend very little time focused on God. There is not much room for God when we sit staring into our selves. Paul goes so far as to call this self obsession a "dead end".

But the good news is that on the road to life we don't have to stay stuck on a street warning "No Outlet". None of us turns down a street with a sign like that expecting that it is lying to us. Yet, we spend a lot of our time and energy living on a path that goes no where, devoid of a spiritual awareness and focus. What we can hope for is that if we find ourselves on one of those "No Outlet" streets in life that it perhaps will have a nice little cul-de-sac for us to turn around and head out into life's main road.

A life lived with God is a life on the open road. It is a life lived with grand vistas, a bigger picture, an opportunity to see and experience new things often unexpectedly.

Consider this summer a road trip taken through God's eyes. Stay focused on ways God is present and consider spending more time thinking and wondering about God. It might just give you a different outlook, a sharper image that bridges the gap and makes you alive in new and exciting ways.

S.A. Kennedy