Broken Attention

I had a 40 minute drive the other day. This is rare for me. I live 2 miles from my job so my daily commute doesn’t even allow my old 93′ F-150 to warm up by the time I arrive at the warehouse. I’m okay with that, but I’d be dishonest if I said I don’t miss a more lengthy drive to work (I’d probably get sick of it after a week though…). I’ve heard it called ‘transition’ time. That time between two different places of responsibility. For me, that’s work and home. And it can be other places as well, but that’s the biggest one for me. Pause and take this in: if you have a quality transition time and are not taking advantage of it I implore you to re-assess what you do in that time. I’m all about the habit of putting on music or a podcast or whatever you may do…vocal warmups or self help mantras. But if it’s a 15 minute or more drive you could simply drive in silence and allow yourself some time to settle in. Do you realize that we live in a world where it is EXTREMELY difficult to find a place of silence? That 15 minutes could be the difference between winning and losing your ‘day’. I’ve heard it said before…”it’s how you start that sets you up for you finish.” (this is is direct contrast to the age old ‘it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish’ belief) I’ve never forgotten that Rod. If you’re an extroverted person this is going to feel like hypocrisy. I hear the push back already. I get it, that drive may just be the only ‘you’ time you get….trust me, I get that. But what if that time spent intentionally in silence and tranquility is all your soul and precious heart need to get in tune and alignment for your day to come. Or just try it once or twice and see what you get. A lot of our life is spent in this state of white noise. A whole bunch of sounds but not much is understood. Utilizing the quiet time for your benefit could potentially bring healing to areas you didn’t even know were hurting.

I work a very high demand job. Most of my days my focus is to sit down and push through my work, but by lunch most days I haven’t completed 50% of what I set out to do. Most of my time is spent conversing and strategizing and putting out fires that were unexpected. Some days it’s a matter of communicating with the staff for that day what the plan is or what needs to be prioritized. So for me, the time before my day begins is crucial to setting my pace. That is a time to align my heart and my body and my mind for the coming day. I don’t do this regularly, but rather when I think of it. Sometimes my quick 3 minute drive is all I need to transition from dad to employee. Sometimes I need a few minutes, the first 5-10 minutes of my day to lock in.

Okay, so back to the attention thing. Imagine a world in which we could carve out time to be dedicated to ONE thing at a time. Taking you back to my drive. I’m in a Penske 26′ moving truck. I leave our new warehouse heading to home base with a truck full of inventory. I can only go so fast and I am preparing my heart and mind for a somewhat lengthier drive. I had my ear phones in listening to some music, probably an Upperroom Youtube video. Instantly, before I even got on the highway I felt strongly I needed some healing time of prayer. I needed to re-center and focus on the Lord and what He was speaking in that moment. The word I was hearing was “consecrate”. So I spoke it out to the Lord: I consecrate this time, the next 40 minutes, to You. I am your Son, speak my Father.”

Legitimately, no more than 5 minutes later I realized I was hungry and needed food. I stop for some food, get in the truck and get distracted by my phone suggesting a different clip on Youtube.

“In the matter of 5 minutes I went from consecration to deprivation.”

— Some Random Wild Man

Deprivation may be a strong word. But that’s exactly what I transitioned into. I turned my attention, my gaze from the Lord Almighty and became enraptured by a new video. Hence the title for this post: Broken Attention. In my mind, I see the word broken as an adjective and a verb. In that moment my attention was broken, snapped, separated, shattered, blown to smithereens. Whatever word you want to use there, I lost connectivity with my time of consecration to the Lord. Isn’t that the epitome of idolatry? I chose something else, someone else to worship in that moment.

Note: I don’t know how my tone comes across to you but I am not intending to pick on myself here. I am merely stating the facts. There are times to be gracious with your self and times to be more blunt and direct. A lot of this portion of my writing is the more blunt style. I’ve got to be honest with myself and my audience. God’s grace is of the nature of the most miraculous substances on the planet. His life was given to redeem me from the sin and death, and redeems me in the most active ways of the word. His blood pursues me daily. His Love and Kindness leads me back to repentance. I thank God for His great, great gift of life and love and reconciliation.

So where was I? Ah yes, verbs and adjectives. I can also see how that word broken could be viewed as an adjective there. As a descriptor of a state of my soul: broken in nature. My attention, be it a commodity or a state of mental capacity or even a currency, with which I purchase things I value. What a thought that is. My attention is used as a form of trade and commerce. Where my attention is there is transaction. I give and yield and debit (or credit depending on the action) from my mind (i.e the bank) with where I place my attention. Examples of attention (in no order of importance of judgement; these are purely areas to spend your attention…also a non exhaustive list):

• Social Media

• Netflix or any content provider

• Politics

• Sports

• Music

• Pop Culture

• Friends

• Work

• Family

• Faith

• Reading

• School

• Video Games

• General Smartphone Usage

• Exercise

• Cooking

• And many, many more areas

I hope you can see where I’m getting at. Our attention is far more than just what our eyes are looking at. Our attention, according to someone far smarter than me, is the ‘last frontier’. I heard John Eldredge speak of that on one of his podcasts and found that highly intriguing. Our attention is an area of our lives that has been highly sacred for all of history. But with the dawning of the information age the world has had the ability to infiltrate our private space more and more. So much so that just today, I went and bought new tires for our family van. When I got home and put on a video for some ambiance around the house, guess what the first advertisement was on the app? Yep….a new tire commercial. That’s how deep this propaganda runs, right into our daily decisions. It’s a scary thing how much ‘personal data’ is available out there. (the advertisers should have shown me that video earlier though, because I had already purchased tires from a competitor about an hour before that). So, if we believe, like Paul, that we wage war with the world (see 2 Corinthians 10) then how do we fight back? One of the ways is by consecrating our hearts to the Lord. It’s by offering ourselves as sacrifices. It’s most definitely by refining our attention on a daily basis.

Jesus, help us heal our attention on you. We believe you have reconciled our hearts and are longing to realign our whole being to you: spirit, soul and body.

Come Lord Jesus.