That to-do list! I start on one item, get distracted by another thing that needs to be done, get one step into that task and am reminded of something else that is urgent, begin to do that, and can no longer recall what the first thing I set out to do was.

Can you relate?

The constant interruptions might be my own personality trait, but recently I read a book called The Power of Fun by Catherine Price.

Before she shows us useful pathways to rediscover fun, she explains that distraction is not an accident these days.

For those of us who spend a lot of time staring into screens (cell phone, computer, ipads, television) we are captive to the projects of those who design the apps. They want our attention and if they cannot have all of it, they are always their to (bing) alert us to something more interesting that is calling for our attention.

They promise us fun, but do not deliver. They rely on the same psychology that slot machines do. Stimulating our brains with the false promise of “fun.”

I have decided she is right. And I’m going to do my best to quit cultivating my mental monkey mind which hops from place to place.

Distraction keeps pulling me from things that matter most.

This is even the case if the app is offering us something that in and of itself is fine.

The most treasured thing my app offers are recorded books. I listen to them ALL THE TIME.

But now I am at least occasionally choosing to not lose myself in them.

When I go for a walk, I am trying to listen to bird song live without my headphones and lastest read in the plan.

I turn off all devices an hour before bed, so that I am less likely to give my wife half-headed attention.

I unsubscribed from emails I never read anyways.

I’m reading through a stack of books that have on my to-be-read pile instead of listening to a book and playing a game at the same time.

A philosopher and theologian of the past, Søren Kierkegaard wrote a book summarizing much of the sermon on the mount in a simple phrase: Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.

When our minds and hearts are unsuccessfully trying to run in multiple directions at a time, we cannot be attentive to what God is asking us to listen to and see.

I am trying to nurture the focus that attention to God’s movement depends on. May God keep my heart purely and clearly alert so that this might be so.

About Philip Ruge-Jones

After I served for eighteen years as a professor of theology at Texas Lutheran University, my family decided to return to the Midwest where my wife and I grew up, attended college and seminary. Read more...