Being Interrupted

We live in an age of a million distractions and as humans our attention spans are getting shorter. We have all heard Paul’s exhortation in 1 Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing” but in an age that is full of things to do and that take our attention away from Jesus, is that even possible?

I recently started Pete Scazzero’s Emotionally Healthy Relationships devotional and I was struck by his introduction in the book to the ancient spiritual discipline known as the Daily Office (the word “office” comes from the Latin word “opus” or “work”). He says, “The goal of the Daily Office is to pay attention to God throughout the entire day—in the midst of our activities…For the early church, the Daily Office—praying at fixed times throughout the day—was always the first ‘work of God’ to be done. Nothing was to interfere with that priority.”

He goes on to give examples throughout scripture of the Israelites practicing prayer in the morning, afternoon and evening, the prophet Daniel praying 3 times a day, David having set times of prayer 7 times per day, and Jesus and his disciples practicing prayer at set times each day. Most of us are familiar with the bells that ring at certain times throughout the day at monasteries and monks are to drop everything to spend time with God in prayer.

I started thinking about this in my own life and how to practically to incorporate this Daily Office and allow God to interrupt my day. I want to be careful not to turn this into some legalistic practice that is in and of itself the goal. I just want to tune into the presence of God, the one that is always around me, wrapping me in love and grace, but that I all too often don’t see or am not aware of. So I started incorporating a simple practice of setting alarms on my watch each day at a few strategic times that might be most likely to find myself in a position where I can pause and tune into Jesus and just sit still. Even if it’s for two minutes, I have found that this to be a really helpful way to be reminded of the Father’s presence, how much I’m loved, and just pay attention to what he’s already doing and see him looking at me with a smile. It’s simple. I want this practice not to be the focus, but hopefully the more I can tune into his Spirit of gentleness, love, patience, joy, and goodness, then it allows those things to flow into me and hopefully overflow to the lives of those around me.

It’s not a perfect practice and it’s still new and I’m still going to snooze it or miss it or steamroll it at times. But I do think in an age full of technology and distraction, it’s been one small but helpful and practical way that interrupts me, reminds me to just stop and pause and embrace my own belovedness, even it’s only for a minute.

Matt