Themes

C.S.Lewis said, ” A life is comprised of a few themes.”  I have been wondering… Have we been juggling more stuff than we should as Jesus followers? Is the one life we have, comprised of a few themes? Or to many themes? There is a subtle cultural temptation out there to spend more, purchase more, and buy more then we should. This has obviously been muted by the economic circumstances we face. But I have to ask this silly philosophical question: Has our moral essence as followers of Jesus been impaired by the commercialization of these invisible cultural forces. Probably! And days like these force us to evaluate and reflect on how we have been living our lives. As Jesus followers our focus should be on Jesus! Right! But I think we have done the unthinkable? We Jesus followers have lost the art of focusing on Jesus. We have been focused, just on the wrong things.  My guess is that we have been exploited by our own inability to acknowledge that we cant say no.  No to distractions.  No to commercialization.  No to some very good things.  Why? I think its really simple:  we just lost our passion.  Focusing on to many things can do that to a person. An oxymoron?  Absolutely!  But the secret of focus is the ability to remove threatening distractions that smothers passion.  While Jesus’ wisdom is simple: our summons to follow him demands absolute focus.  It is also not easy!  And in a world teeming with so many options, much like a buffet, this invitation is radically subversive.  What this means for us is also very simple.  We must consciously walk through our lives, take inventory, and remove any clutter that has been getting in the way of a dynamic and authentic devotion with Jesus and our world.  This means prioritizing a few practices in our life: reading the Biblical text in chunks, intentionally focusing on our “cause” our “mission” through prayer, and serving our world in evocative ways .  If we could just weave these simple practices not only into the fabric of something as practical as our schedule, because what one does with their life is what they do every day, but also ensure that these practices become absolutes that we will never negotiate, then I think we are getting back on the right track…

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