Put That Away

As parents, we've all been there.  As children, we've all done that.  As humans...

I guess there's a part of us that always likes to be distracted.  The present moment in which we live can, at times, seem droll, or routine - dull enough to want to be somewhere else.  When Gen Xers were entering our 'boring years' (simply the years when all teenagers exclaim 'I'm bored...' when they haven't been stimulated for eleven seconds) we turned to video games like Atari or Nintendo with various games like Pong and Asteroids.  Amazingly, we'd play for a little while and then turn it off because, frankly, shooting spinning rocks in dual color on an old Zenith TV was not really that much different than being bored in real life.

Each successive generation of teens has their own escape from the tedium of life.  I won't expound on the ways we deviate from the real to the unreal, but in the last ten years or so, the obvious method of escape is through handheld devices.  Some people, teenagers and older people included, are incapable of being without this digital security blanket.  So much so that putting them down for even a few moments might cause an existential crisis of life.  We've learned to live somewhere else.  Our energy has been focused not on being present but being distant.  When we ride public transportation, silence reigns because wifi has filled our ears as the headphones go in.

After dutifully neglecting the chores at hand, it's almost like my mom used to shout down the basement steps, "Put that thing away!"  Enough blasting away at two dimensional spinning rocks and enter the real world where people are waiting to be part of your life AND where your chores need to get done.

If you are anything like me, I get snared by the stories and the actions of Jesus and neglect the narratives of his heritage.  For instance, this story came through in our staff Bible study they other day.  In 2 Samuel 4-6, Israel's comeuppance occurs when their arrogance precedes them in battle.  Because they'd been losing to the Philistines, they decided to bring the ark out because they know that God's glory rests within.  Thus their thinking:  we'll just 'use God' to show those filthy Philistines a thing or two about our God.  Unfortunately, we find out that the Israelites haven't been exactly faithful to their God - they've got their own false gods in their tents, Baals and Ashtoreths, household gods (foreign gods) of power and sexuality.  The people are really in no position to expect anything from the true God because they have turned away.

And the unthinkable happens.  Unlike Indiana Jones' assessment of the Lost Ark of the Covenant, the army which carries the ark is not invincible, and the Israelites find that out first hand.  The Philistines capture the ark.

As the story goes, the ark is taken back to Ashdod (Philistine city) and placed in their own temple at the foot of their god, Dagon, who, during the night, falls over because the power of God rests in the ark.  It's as if the false god is bowing down to the real God.  Anyway, various maladies occur to the Philistines and they eventually send it back to the Israelites who are quite thankful that God's power in the ark has returned.

Samuel, Israel's prophet and leader, had to speak to his people about their distraction - turning away from the God of the past, the future and especially the present.

Then all the people of Israel turned back to the Lord.  So Samuel said to all the Israelites, 'If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.  So the Israelites put away their Baals and their Ashtoreths and served the Lord only.

Notice the wording.  Samuel told the Israelites to 'get rid of'' their foreign gods of power and sexuality (fertility) but the people 'put them away.'

There's a big difference.  As humans, we seem to always want to have the 'what if' power.  What if I really need that later?  What if that particular object seems to give me power over my insufficiencies?
Here's the other side: what if the distractions of life pull us so far away from reality, that we don't actually experience the true majesty of who God is?  Maybe this is the moment when we return to the Lord with all of our hearts and serve him.

I'm not suggesting that we throw away our Smartphones, or get rid of all technology; that's just plain stupid, but their is moment in every day where we can certainly pull our noses back to the present and live the life that God gives us, here and now; this time and place.

Good luck with getting rid of distraction!