Look! A Distraction!

I grew up with a guy with whom I remained friends through college. He's very much the joker type, and there was always some sort of prank to be played on someone, whether it was re-recording their answering machine message in Gregorian chant or telling his roommate he'd unlock the door for him, crawling through the window, and opening the door from the outside (while standing beside said roommate). But one of my favorite things he did was when he would want out of a conversation and simply point and yell, "Look! A distraction!"

Everyone -- including me -- fell for it. We were all distracted by something blatantly called "a distraction" long enough for him to escape.

Life does that to us a lot, I think. We can have laser-like focus on a particular task right until something big and distracting comes along, or maybe we can be barely paying attention to our work and just begging someone to come yell "Look! A distraction!" so we can focus on something else for a while. Sometimes it's just hard to give the task at hand the attention it deserves, and we'll use anything as an excuse to abandon it temporarily (or permanently). We want a distraction.

Every so often, something will come along to distract us from God. It's usually something we really want, and it usually comes at a time we're not giving God a lot of focus anyway -- the times we're just looking for a distraction. It could be more money, someone else's wife, an addictive substance, another religion (or no religion), you name it. Satan throws these temptations at us in an attempt to pull us away from God. But we can't get distracted. We must hold tight to God, work even harder for His kingdom, and flee from such temptations.

Keep on working for God. Cling to Him and the salvation He offers through the blood of Christ. Don't get distracted.