I seem to have come up against a wall of some sort here in the golden state. I keep wanting to do things and then ending my days feeling like nothing is getting done. The American culture is quite the life to be thrust back into after spending the last year in the laid back life of East Africa. I’ve always said that I love southern California, as opposed to northern California or the East Coast, because of how much more chill life is here. I’ll tell you that it doesn’t even compare to the chillness of Kilimanjaro. Its all flying by and every flashing advertisement, new fancy gadget and have-to-be-there event is only accelerating this precious experience we call life.
I had dinner with my friend Rodrigo the other day and he asked me if I felt American culture has more distractions. I said no at the time, citing that in my experience in Moshi, I was pretty constantly distracted by my loneliness and what not. That makes sense in my personal experience, but I would say that American culture has many distractions that are ingrained into the very fabric of society.
When I was cleaning out my house in Moshi, I came across my planner from 2009. As I flipped through the pages, I saw so many coffee dates, church events, errands to be run and the like all penciled into my full schedule. One might say that a planner could keep your head from spinning, but more accurately its just the thing that keeps your head spinning at a decent speed without falling off the swivel. I bought a 2010 planner before moving to Moshi and didn’t use it once. As soon as I came back though, I knew that I should get one for 2011 and sure enough its filling up and I’m trying to get stuff done without becoming too distracted by all the things vying for my attention.
After spending some time traveling, I’m realizing more and more that Americans are an anomaly. We like to think about the fact that we are the most powerful nation and that other countries try to emulate us, not realizing that our standard and mode of life isn’t duplicated in any other country. This constant barrage of advertisements and the “time is money and money is god” attitude easily and subtly distracts us from the things that really matter, the things that take time. Not the least of which is cultivating a meaningful relationship with the Lord.
I don’t know where my time is going. On one hand, I like that because it means that I’ll be back home in Moshi soon and be back with my kids. On the other hand, it’ll be a bummer to leave my friends and family again. Far more daunting than that is the realization that our wedding on June 4th is coming quicker than we realize and there’s so so much that needs to get done. And as I try to get that stuff done, I keep getting sidetracked by all this other stuff that I had no real intent to do. There just a bunch of distractions and I can’t exactly put my finger on what they are all the time. Sure, some of the things are pretty clear… wasting time on the internet, playing video games and the like, but it wouldn’t seem that these things would take away as much time as they do, yet they do.
In the midst of all the things that are taking my time and attention, my relationship building seems to be the one taking the backseat. First and foremost with the Lord, my time reading the Bible has gone down, my prayer time the same. Melissa and I are praying together everyday, but were not doing a great job with getting in the word. There are some pre-marital books we’ve been meaning to start that we haven’t gotten to yet. I haven’t been reading other books either. Even my writing has been taking a dip due to an idle mind that isn’t feeding on spiritual meat. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I need to get a better grip on my time management and redeem the time by putting the distractions aside and focusing on the Lord.
Its something that I’ve struggled with before and something that has bugged me in the lives of other followers as well. Its pretty ridiculous some of the things that we engage in while letting eternally meaningful activities fall by the wayside. These meaningless activities are just distracting us away from what we ought to be doing.
I suppose to whatever degree, I’ve gotten out of touch with what it feels like to follow Jesus in the American context. That makes sense. As I’ve been reminded of lately, we as followers of Christ have to be vehemently counter-cultural. That’s even an understatement. Its not just being counter-culture, because that is often predicated off of some bitterness felt towards the mainstream culture. We, instead, need to be entirely “other” culture. Part of that is not getting swept up in the hype and values of the society around us; such things are distractions and hinder the gospel. On the contrary, we are to be agents of redemption for those elements of culture that we interact with; at the same time not buying into the underlying, subconscious systems that propagate such cultural elements.
Focus. We are here for divine purposes. Our lives have been given to us by the Lord that we might do something significant and holy with them. By allowing ourselves to indulge in distractions, we forfeit God-ordained time for something better. He is the Giver of time, the Giver of days and the Giver of life, for this we give praise.
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The Rundown: Stuff with Melissa is going well. I love her so much and more and more reminded of the Lord’s hand in our relationship. Everything coming up is quite daunting, but we are excited for what He’ll do. The wedding plans and stuff are a work in progress, but it’ll all get done. I preached at FBC Los Osos on Sunday which went well and this next week will be bigger. See the furlough tab for specifics. Hanging with friends down here has been especially great and Melissa is fitting right in. I’ll be meeting more of her friends tomorrow as we travel up to Ventura so that’ll be good. Yeah, that’s it.
I had dinner with my friend Rodrigo the other day and he asked me if I felt American culture has more distractions. I said no at the time, citing that in my experience in Moshi, I was pretty constantly distracted by my loneliness and what not. That makes sense in my personal experience, but I would say that American culture has many distractions that are ingrained into the very fabric of society.
When I was cleaning out my house in Moshi, I came across my planner from 2009. As I flipped through the pages, I saw so many coffee dates, church events, errands to be run and the like all penciled into my full schedule. One might say that a planner could keep your head from spinning, but more accurately its just the thing that keeps your head spinning at a decent speed without falling off the swivel. I bought a 2010 planner before moving to Moshi and didn’t use it once. As soon as I came back though, I knew that I should get one for 2011 and sure enough its filling up and I’m trying to get stuff done without becoming too distracted by all the things vying for my attention.
After spending some time traveling, I’m realizing more and more that Americans are an anomaly. We like to think about the fact that we are the most powerful nation and that other countries try to emulate us, not realizing that our standard and mode of life isn’t duplicated in any other country. This constant barrage of advertisements and the “time is money and money is god” attitude easily and subtly distracts us from the things that really matter, the things that take time. Not the least of which is cultivating a meaningful relationship with the Lord.
I don’t know where my time is going. On one hand, I like that because it means that I’ll be back home in Moshi soon and be back with my kids. On the other hand, it’ll be a bummer to leave my friends and family again. Far more daunting than that is the realization that our wedding on June 4th is coming quicker than we realize and there’s so so much that needs to get done. And as I try to get that stuff done, I keep getting sidetracked by all this other stuff that I had no real intent to do. There just a bunch of distractions and I can’t exactly put my finger on what they are all the time. Sure, some of the things are pretty clear… wasting time on the internet, playing video games and the like, but it wouldn’t seem that these things would take away as much time as they do, yet they do.
In the midst of all the things that are taking my time and attention, my relationship building seems to be the one taking the backseat. First and foremost with the Lord, my time reading the Bible has gone down, my prayer time the same. Melissa and I are praying together everyday, but were not doing a great job with getting in the word. There are some pre-marital books we’ve been meaning to start that we haven’t gotten to yet. I haven’t been reading other books either. Even my writing has been taking a dip due to an idle mind that isn’t feeding on spiritual meat. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I need to get a better grip on my time management and redeem the time by putting the distractions aside and focusing on the Lord.
Its something that I’ve struggled with before and something that has bugged me in the lives of other followers as well. Its pretty ridiculous some of the things that we engage in while letting eternally meaningful activities fall by the wayside. These meaningless activities are just distracting us away from what we ought to be doing.
I suppose to whatever degree, I’ve gotten out of touch with what it feels like to follow Jesus in the American context. That makes sense. As I’ve been reminded of lately, we as followers of Christ have to be vehemently counter-cultural. That’s even an understatement. Its not just being counter-culture, because that is often predicated off of some bitterness felt towards the mainstream culture. We, instead, need to be entirely “other” culture. Part of that is not getting swept up in the hype and values of the society around us; such things are distractions and hinder the gospel. On the contrary, we are to be agents of redemption for those elements of culture that we interact with; at the same time not buying into the underlying, subconscious systems that propagate such cultural elements.
Focus. We are here for divine purposes. Our lives have been given to us by the Lord that we might do something significant and holy with them. By allowing ourselves to indulge in distractions, we forfeit God-ordained time for something better. He is the Giver of time, the Giver of days and the Giver of life, for this we give praise.
--------------------------
The Rundown: Stuff with Melissa is going well. I love her so much and more and more reminded of the Lord’s hand in our relationship. Everything coming up is quite daunting, but we are excited for what He’ll do. The wedding plans and stuff are a work in progress, but it’ll all get done. I preached at FBC Los Osos on Sunday which went well and this next week will be bigger. See the furlough tab for specifics. Hanging with friends down here has been especially great and Melissa is fitting right in. I’ll be meeting more of her friends tomorrow as we travel up to Ventura so that’ll be good. Yeah, that’s it.
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