When my kids were younger and active in sports, I took thousands of pictures of them in action. One of my skilled photographer friends shared some tricks to make sports photography more interesting. One idea he recommended was to reduce the aperture setting which lets less light in and blurs everything in front of and behind the image. This highlights the subject, as in this picture:
It occurred to me that we as Christian men may be able to use the same idea of blurring or softening the amount of focus we place on certain things so that other things can come more clearly into focus.
Jeremiah 29:13 says “You will seek me and find me with all of your heart.”
If we are all being honest, not many of us can claim that we are seeking God with all of our heart. And, honestly, I don’t think it is even possible to do so 100% of the time. There are simply too many distractions – especially in our world today. BUT we can take steps to move in the right direction by doing two things:
- Recognize and acknowledge some of the things that are keeping us from seeking God with all of our heart, and
- Decide what we need to focus on and make those areas more of a priority
So, for many of us right now, the items in #1 (distractions) might look like this picture:
You can see that there is another list about six feet behind and to the left of this one but it is blurry. If we are focused on the distractions, we can’t read what the other one says. But what if we keep our “aperture” the same (meaning we stay narrowly focused on a few things) but simply change the point of our focus? We would end up with the image below with God in focus and the distractions blurred out.
It sounds so easy “on paper” but is difficult to put in to practice so let’s break it down and make it simple. For one day, try eliminating three things:
- Social media (all of it….you won’t miss it and they won’t really miss you)
- All news – local, national, print, radio, tv….all of it….I promise you’ll be ok
- All political discussions. They’re a waste of time. If you already agree with the other person, why waste the time? If you disagree with the other person, you are not going to change their mind.
If it goes well, try it for another day. If it doesn’t go well, try backing off and picking one of the three to try again. As you are able to free up time by eliminating distractions, you’ll have more capacity to turn your heart toward loving God and loving people.
Questions:
- Where is your focus? Do you find yourself thinking more about the God list or the distraction list?
- How would you respond to someone who says that it is vitally important to keep up with the news daily in order to be 100% up to speed with what is going on in the world?
- What do you think would be the worst thing that might happen if you avoided all news and social media for one full day?
- Besides the time you will save, what are some potential benefits of occasionally taking a daily break from news & social media?
- From the “God list” in the picture above, which one or two areas would you be most likely to prioritize if you had extra time to dedicate to them?
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