The Age of Distraction: Part I

In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen. 

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.”  

St Luke 10:41-42

In the age of distraction we are fighting an invisible war against the demons who want to do everything they can to pull us away from Christ. We constantly work against our focus on Christ. Instead, we should be sitting at His feet. But, what does this mean for the 21^st century Christian who has almost all the information in the world at his fingertips? The promise of possessing ‘all the information’ is the false advertisement that was whispered to Eve by the devil. That evil serpent wanted nothing but for her to take her focus away from God. This ultimately led to the death and destruction of our first parents.  

Distractions come and go. But what makes distractions so powerful is that it takes us away from God. So much so as to make us forget about death. If you look around us everyone is fearful of death. So much so that we keep feeding people with lies and medicines, all promising the path way to eternity.

Distractions leave us with emptiness, hungering for more. So, we keep eating the sugar coated pill of poison, distraction. We leave our homes and we bury our faces into everything that we can get our hands on. Imagine if we treated our Holy Scriptures the same way as we treated those items that distract us. Imagine how much our lives would change if we buried our faces into our Bibles or into our prayer corners. Why wouldn’t we want to consume the holy word’s of Scripture that were inspired by the Holy Spirit? So that we may find enlightenment? Yes! The Scriptures is one way that God speaks to us and reveals Himself to us.

Our Remedy!

If we do not think that our distractions are taking us away from God we must look to the psalms. “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not, They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not: They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat. They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusts in them. (Psalm 115: 4-8). When we take our focus away from God we make everything else into god’s.

Distractions is the pathway to worshiping these other god’s. When, we should be keeping our focus on the Lord of Hosts. But, what about distractions that come to us when we are doing our daily prayer rule? Should we stop praying? No! We must ignore them for they seek to take away our conversation and communion away with God.

This is the invisible war. In every war there are battle plans. The generals are ready to lead. A call to arms for men to fight and join the ranks. So, to is our war on distractions. We call up the generals, who are the saints and the Theotokos. We look to our fellow Christians to fight the good fight. Now is the time to lean on each other in this Age of Distraction. Follow Christ who leads us to the Kingdom of Heaven. May our Lord remember us in His Heavenly Kingdom. Amen.