I have been having a tough time recently. Nothing major, but I have hit a few bumps in my life and have been trying to deal with them. (Hint: "deal with them" means that I pray 10x more then I normally do.) I am blessed to have friends that share in my similar beliefs and I love to celebrate with them.
Tonight, I went to a worship session, so to speak, that focused on spreading the Word of our Lord to everyone. The message was for men and women especially in the Greek system, where it is easy to fall into the trap of drinking, hanging out with the wrong people, and, to sum it all up, absorb yourself with worldly things. So often, whether you are Greek or not, we fall into the trap of putting all of our focus, effort, and time into a new cell phone, a boyfriend or girlfriend, school work, Facebook, things that fill nothing in our hearts. I like to call them distractors. I'm not talking about Facebook (or in my case, this blog) distracting you from writing that paper that is due tomorrow. I am talking about the superficial things that, 10 years down the road, won't really matter. These distractors take us away from the Lord.
An easy way to think about this is the optional assignment that my English teacher gave to my class senior year in high school. We were told to write a note to our parents. (Shhhh....Don't tell my parents about this, they think I'm the sweetest kid ever!) We didn't turn it in to my teacher, we didn't even write it during the school year. The letter was a thank you note to our parents for everything that they had ever done for us: make your lunch, teach you how to tie your shoe, tuck you into bed, you name it. It was all up to you. The big tear-jerker part of this is that we left the letter somewhere at home, so that our parents would find it the first night or morning that we were away at college. This little assignment is near and dear to my heart and my parents. I would bet money that the three pages that I wrote to each of them means more then the Christmas presents that I gave them last year. The Christmas presents were materialistic.
All of these distractors were called into light tonight. One of the men who spoke used an analogy that I loved! He held up a solid black picture frame with no picture in it and said:
Tonight, I went to a worship session, so to speak, that focused on spreading the Word of our Lord to everyone. The message was for men and women especially in the Greek system, where it is easy to fall into the trap of drinking, hanging out with the wrong people, and, to sum it all up, absorb yourself with worldly things. So often, whether you are Greek or not, we fall into the trap of putting all of our focus, effort, and time into a new cell phone, a boyfriend or girlfriend, school work, Facebook, things that fill nothing in our hearts. I like to call them distractors. I'm not talking about Facebook (or in my case, this blog) distracting you from writing that paper that is due tomorrow. I am talking about the superficial things that, 10 years down the road, won't really matter. These distractors take us away from the Lord.
An easy way to think about this is the optional assignment that my English teacher gave to my class senior year in high school. We were told to write a note to our parents. (Shhhh....Don't tell my parents about this, they think I'm the sweetest kid ever!) We didn't turn it in to my teacher, we didn't even write it during the school year. The letter was a thank you note to our parents for everything that they had ever done for us: make your lunch, teach you how to tie your shoe, tuck you into bed, you name it. It was all up to you. The big tear-jerker part of this is that we left the letter somewhere at home, so that our parents would find it the first night or morning that we were away at college. This little assignment is near and dear to my heart and my parents. I would bet money that the three pages that I wrote to each of them means more then the Christmas presents that I gave them last year. The Christmas presents were materialistic.
All of these distractors were called into light tonight. One of the men who spoke used an analogy that I loved! He held up a solid black picture frame with no picture in it and said:
"When you look at a framed picture on a shelf, you look at it and say, 'Wow, what a great picture!' You don't say, 'What a great frame!' Me, you, we need to be a picture frame for the Lord. So when a person looks at you, they don't see you; rather, they see the Lord."
It just makes sense. We need to constantly reach out to others. Dropping the distractors and holding (or framing) the more and most important thing in life. Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
I looked up the word attraversiamo after watching Eat pray love and have run across your blog. That movie has an emotional affect on me I don't really know how to put into words. I watched it after it just came out and again tonight and have found feeling the exact same way for so many different reasons.
ReplyDeleteI must say, you also being a believer in our Lord is so wonderful as I am too. This particular post on 2/21/11 really struck me listening to you talk about "distractors". This very day 9/17/19 I was thinking about the same thing, not only in general about society but for myself. How it is so easy to become distracted from the real reason we are here- to love and worship our Lord and Savior, to spread the good message and not to conform to this world. I'm not saying not to participate in life but to be awake for the real reason of our existence.
Your blog is a breath of fresh air for me and I'm enjoying it.
Hope life is treating you well.
Good luck to you!