Focus

Focus

Growing up I was a Boy Scout and spent a lot of time camping, which includes camping in the dark. Invariably there would come a time where I’d have to go some lengthy distance in the dark but being a good scout (one who is always prepared) I had my flashlight. But it didn’t take me long to learn that even with a flashlight walking in the dark was no easy task. In fact, in order to get where I was going I needed to make a choice. I could shine the light up ahead of me to make sure nothing was coming at me; say like Big Foot for instance. The problem with this method is that I’d often trip because I couldn’t see all the rocks and branches on my path. The other option was of course to shine the light right at my feet so that I didn’t trip.

I find that experience repeated time and time again in my life. I seem to cycle between moments of focusing on my life in the future (what will it be like when my daughters are teenagers?) and moments in which all I can think about is how to accomplish the next task before me (fixing the closet door for the 397th time!). When I try looking into the future I often get tripped up by the day-to-day stuff of my life. When I only focus on the day to day I get surprised by the future; tax day, my anniversary, little things like that. But try as I might I can not seem to focus on both at the same time.

That’s why I’ve always been fascinated by one small verse of the Bible, Psalms 119:105. We’re told that God’s Word is a lamp for our feet AND a light for our path. And that is kind of amazing to me. That God would be concerned not just about our future but also about our everyday stuff. Yet as amazing as it is I still wonder how? How do I focus on two things at once?

Perhaps the answer is in the third and most common method I found my way in the dark as a scout; I never walked the path alone. In Scouts you are to always use the buddy system and it worked really well trying to walk a path in the dark because one would shine the light at the feet and the other would shine the light down the path.

It makes me wonder if my inability to focus on both the immediate and the future is because I’ve ditched my buddy. God has sent me someone to shine his light on my next step but I’ve ignored them because I like to be in control. God has sent me someone to flash their beam down my path but I don’t trust them because they’ve hurt me before. Maybe I can’t focus because I think of my relationship with God as just that, MY relationship with God apart from everyone else.

The disciple John tells us that Jesus once said, “"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." (John 8:12) But later in life that same disciple would write the early church and say, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” (I John 1:7) Jesus is the light; yet we walk in that light with each other and not alone. Maybe the problem with my focus is that it is always on me…

Read 1 John 1