Friday night on my almost daily walk I was heading down our hill not watching where I was going. I was absorbed in reading my email on my iPhone. Hearing the sound of another’s footfall I looked up into the face of my neighbor walking up the hill absorbed with his iPhone. We were face to face a step apart. Phew! No collision. Both of us were so attentive to something other than what was important; where we were going.
I fear this to be the case for a fair amount of my students. They too are absorbed, with almost everything except where they are going. But, perhaps it’s not just my students. Could it be most of us? It is so easy to fill our lives with paying the bills, raising the kids, transporting the kids to school, play dates and soccer and hockey that we have little time to think about where we are going.
I experience this so often when beginning a book. I get caught sometimes going somewhere I don’t want to go. Movies also do that. The reviews are good and yet I soon realize this isn’t where I want to go. Fortunately, God gave us choice and free will and just because we have started a book or a movie definitely does not mean we have to finish it. We are in charge of our destinations. My problem is that often I want to go where I don’t want to go. On such occasions I remind myself of Psalm 1:1, “Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on September 26, 2010
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org