Hebrews 12:2a – Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus.
There you sit, in the quiet of your room, your Bible opened, your coffee piping with steam, and your opened journal. The quietness of the morning is refreshing. Until…you pick up your phone.
What seemed so peaceful and quiet only moments before, your brain fresh from a sound night sleep was now gone. That simple action of opening your phone pulled your brain in, distracting, cluttering and unfortunately causing the peaceful focus to diminish.
Well friend, this is still something I am working on. Not only the distraction of my phone, but it could be picking up one of my kids journals to write in it, or looking at my work-out journal, going in the bathroom because I decide to weigh myself, refreshing mine and my husbands coffee. Then there is the moment one of my kids wakes up and walks in my room… if I am not almost done with my quiet time, that is a great clue that too much of my time was taken up with distractions.
I will say this… several months ago, I implemented a “no social media” policy before having my Quiet Time. That has helped tremendously to keep my brain peaceful. Can you relate? It’s like, once you open up that phone to the world of Facebook, internet searching, text messages, emails, ShapChat, Instagram, Twitter… the peaceful quiet has turned to chaotic clutter. Sometimes it’s not even with bad things… I mean, this morning I was journaling in Tyler Jr’s journal to record some of my thoughts about his school year since it was his last day of school yesterday. It was a “good” thing to do, something I wanted to do, as I try to write in each kid’s journal once a month (in a perfect world), but between that and chatting with my husband, my quiet time quickly diminished until 4 kids were awake tweeting like little birds for food.
So…. my encouragement… let’s diminish the noise. Let’s quiet the voices of the outside world. Let’s put our phones on airplane mode, check the text messages later, surf the internet on the Under Armour site after breakfast. Let’s employ Airplane mode to help us avoid chasing distractions.
Are you with me? Let’s trade divided and distracted for something better, focused and hearing from the Lord.