I don’t know about you, but it feels like in the modern
world we have so many things competing for our attention. I’ve noticed it in
myself recently, I find it very easy to start doing multiple things at once.
But as my fiancée repeatedly reminds me, I am dreadful at multitasking. So what
I’m really doing when I’m on a Zoom call and have a tab open to check the bbc
news, and reading a Whatsapp at the same time, is I’m doing all of those things
badly. At best I’m doing one of them, but I’m probably so distracted and all
over the place that I’m not focussing on anything.
The problem is, everything in our world is competing for our
attention. We have that little noise that pops up on our phone to tell us that
a notification has come in on some app or other. And it’s hard to ignore that
little popup. And sometimes I do it to myself, I think of a question I want to
know the answer to and want to look up an answer right away, even if I’m in the
middle of something else.
What do we give our full attention to? Where should we
devote our focus? Well we need to give our attention to what’s trustworthy, and
to what matters. There’s no point reading lots of information or news if it
turns out to be false. We give attention to something trustworthy. And we all
need to work out what we think is trustworthy, what news sources we listen to
et cetera.
And there’s one verse in the Bible that tells us about
something that really deserves are attention. “Here is a trustworthy saying
that deserves full acceptance” Ooh, this sounds good, “Christ Jesus came into
the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst.” This is Paul writing, and
he tells us why Jesus has come, as a Saviour. And he came to save people like
him, sinful, broken people. And that is a trustworthy saying. And I want to say
I agree with him. I too am a sinner, but Christ Jesus came into the world to
save me, and He came to save you too. Why not look into what that means? It’s a
trustworthy saying deserving of acceptance. It warrants your attention.
Matt Gurtler
