A couple of weeks ago you may have noticed that the Focus Press Blog took a bit of a break. Feeling a little burnt out by the constant noise of social media, I decided to take a step back from the blog and avoid Facebook and Twitter for a week or so. Once I re-engaged with the digital world of communication it didn’t take long before I realized how quickly I had been sucked back into it. Much has been written about our age of notifications and constant connection, and you don’t need me to spell out just how crazy it all has become, as you probably know from experience how easily our lives can be overtaken by smartphones and social media.
Add in with that the growth of multitasking and it seems like our attention is as divided as it has ever been. The more we focus on getting more things done, the less focus we can give to each of those things. We’re pulled in so many different directions that we train ourselves to not give 100% to anything we do (as this article points out).  We have a constant need to be doing something and while we’re doing that one thing we’re thinking about the other things we need to do and we keep spinning these plates to get it all done… and prayer and Bible study gets relegated to our last 10 minutes before falling asleep, where we drowsily read through a chapter and say a quick prayer and go to bed. Or we go throughout the day saying brief prayers for what pops into our head from moment to moment (which is a good idea) but never clear out a part of our schedule to just stop and give God our undivided attention. Or we’re too busy to think about how we can serve other people.
Ultimately, we become like Martha in Luke 10. We wonder how she could be so busy that she didn’t even appreciate the fact that the Son of God Himself was sitting in her home… and then we realize that we do the exact same thing. Like her, we get so busy trying to get to all the things we have to do that we fail to realize that God Himself has given us the privilege of coming into His presence with our prayers and learning from His Word.
So, I’m going to ask you to stop. Every single day, find time to stop what you’re doing and show God that He is priority #1, that He has His place in our day and everything else is secondary. We can only do that in this crazy day and age if we learn to stop.
Luke 5:16 tells us that even in the midst of all the teaching, traveling, and healing Jesus was doing, He still would find a way to slip away from it all and make time for the Father. If Jesus needed time to take a break from this world to sit quietly before God, so do we. For Him that meant finding a time when others were sleeping or busy doing something else and getting away unnoticed. For us, that means something entirely different. We have to close the laptop, turn off the cellphone, shut off the TV, and go somewhere to get away from the constant million-miles-an-hour routine.
Christianity is something that requires our intellectual connection, to be sure, but sometimes we make it such an intellectual pursuit that it becomes purely academic. Because we know what to do, we don’t think about why we’re doing what we do. It should absolutely blow our minds every single time we get to stop and pray because we’re getting to talk to the Creator of the universe and He wants to hear from us. When we think of prayer for what it really is – that inexplicable connection that only makes sense because of His unending love for us – it’s not something we have to try to squeeze in here or there. It’s something we would be foolish to try to live without. It would be ridiculous for us to see it that way and not let it dictate everything else we do in our busy lives rather than letting the busyness dictate where prayer gets put.
So, the challenge to myself and to everyone else in this multitasking-oriented, screen-saturated generation is to make time every single day to shut it all down for a bit and get closer with God. If the threat of the lions’ den didn’t keep Daniel from sticking to his practice of praying three times daily, who are we to let busyness, the internet, and 21st century stress get in the way?
By Jack Wilkie
(This article has some good ideas on where to start with meditation and prayer.)