Distractions

Distraction is a word that I have heard a lot lately. It seems there are always things that can distract us from the most important things in our lives. It can seem insignificant, but it is often that those insignificant things pile up and have a far greater impact than we thought.

When we are distracted, we can miss the miraculous moments of God, the moments He reminds us of His goodness, and the beauty of life. We can get stuck in this rut where we go through the motions day to day, distracted and miss out on all that God has for us.

I believe in today’s world, parents hold the greatest distraction right in their hands. If we are not careful we will miss out on some of our greatest blessing(s) God has given us, our children. I fear that we watch other children grow up on social media more than we watch our own children right in front of us. We snap a picture that takes a few seconds, post it, and continue to scroll for hours. Distracted.

My husband and I took our son to a trampoline park a couple of months ago. Our son was overwhelmed and excited walking into this new place. The place was packed with tons of children running around. I believe my husband may have been enjoying the experience more than our son. We had been there for a little bit, and then I began to look around. I saw all of these children running around, learning, and making memories. Then I looked around at the parents and caregivers. They were all sitting on the outskirts on their phones. There was only one other couple enjoying the time with their children. The thought popped into my head that I had written above, in today’s world we are watching other people’s children grow up on social media, but aren’t watching our own children grow up right in front of us. I watched as parents got a little irritated when a child said, “watch this”, because the distraction in their hands at that moment was greater than the blessing in front of them. I am not saying this to promote myself or my husband in any way, because we have plenty of faults and have been guilty of this as well.

I don’t want to miss out on beautiful moments that I cannot get back, because I was distracted.

There are spiritual distractions. These types of distractions happen whenever we are set on what seems a clear path from God. Situations arise, good or bad, that take our focus away from what God’s Will is for our life at that time. During times of spiritual transition this seems to increase. Don’t fall for this, don’t be distracted. Keep your attention focused on the Will of God. These “big” situations won’t really seem that big whenever the Will of God manifests in your life.

Then there are distractions that happen in our everyday walk with God. We have meeting time scheduled with God and we get a phone call. We sit down to read the Word of God and we remember the load of laundry that we didn’t finish. We tell ourselves that it “isn’t a big deal” and we will “do it later”, but it never happens.

It is the little things that seem insignificant that tend to impact us the greatest. Looking at a distraction for a moment, can end up changing our entire focus. The little things, little moments, add up and change our God ordained course, because we become distracted.

I have tried to make it a point to examine my life. If I would have allowed myself to turn my focus onto distractions this week I would have missed…

My son when he was exploring this, big to him, world; balancing on a twig like it was a several thousand pound tree over water. I would have missed the beauty in the small moment.

Whenever I was in a church service last night, and the minister said a couple of encouraging words that I needed to hear. I would have missed God trying to speak to me.

The meeting I had with my God this afternoon. I could have finished the million things on my to-do list, but I would have missed HIM.

What can you do to turn your focus away from what is trying to distract you?