Focus

I am convinced that one of the greatest battles that we face in the 21st Century is the fight for focus. There are constant distractions that tend to fight for our attention. I was reading an article last night that really struck me, the average corporate employee receives 200 emails a day. There is such a flood in people's inbox now that there are applications that you can add to Microsoft Outlook that will prioritize your emails for you so that you do not miss what is important mixed in with the unimportant.

When we lose our focus we degenerate immediately into the trap of spending our time on what is urgent as opposed to what is important. We jump from one thing to the next without ever making a difference anywhere. This breeds frustration in our personal lives. What is urgent is rarely what is important. It is learning to see through the constant blur of activity into what is truly important that is difficult.

Spiritually we can lose our focus if we are not constantly prioritizing our lives. We tend to lose focus on what is important, and we tend to flow towards what "appears" urgent. The problem with this is that it is not proactive, but rather reactive. When we constantly prioritize based upon apparent urgency we are always reacting to circumstances and situations. Much of the eternal value in our lives rarely appears urgent, but rather making focused investments into the supposed un-urgent things is of highest priority. The reason this is difficult is that we rarely see results immediately in these investments so we gravitate towards misguided beliefs that what does not show immediate results is not important.

Making deposits into your kids may not seem urgent, but it is eternal. Prayer may not seem what is urgent, but it is the only thing that makes a spiritual difference. Being still and allowing God to be God may seem counter productive, but yet that is many times when God shows up most powerfully. I am challenged daily to focus on the eternal and not chase the urgent.