I’ll be real honest with you, in sitting down and trying to get this post together this week, I had a hard time focusing in on how to best verbalize the “big idea.” You see, it’s one of those subjects that perfectly illustrates itself as it is conceptualized. It evades just as it is evasive. It constantly does exactly what it is. So what is “it?”

Distraction.

Look around you. Seriously. Do it.

Take in all the elements around you right now. Your cell phone. The internet and it’s proliferation of advertisements. Cars driving by. Music over the speaker system. Idle chatter. Paintings and pictures on the wall. That next sip of coffee. Your next due date. Your next meeting. What you’ll have for that all-important next meal. What else you should be doing right now.

All these factors and a million others sit in waiting, holding their collective breath for the next moment they might steal away a second of your attention. Some are more important than others and some we could do without, but every distraction you or I face has the potential to seriously derail our otherwise focused and well-meaning plans.

This absolute truth nailed me a few days ago as I was connecting the dots of a busy, albeit very productive and important, morning. Heading home after a great planning meeting to change and prepare for the rest of the day, I portioned out a whole hour to change clothes so I wouldn’t be rushed. Get home, get dressed, and go to work. Simple plan. Only, I didn’t factor in the excessive amount of coffee I had consumed during my morning meeting. More importantly, I didn’t factor in the caffeine.

You see, coffee has this wonderful/terrible effect on me. My brain buzzes, I get creative and I have an insatiable drive to get things done. All sounds pretty good, right? I mean, who wouldn’t benefit from a rabid work ethic once and a while? The problem enters when I can’t seem to get my brain to grasp only one task and accomplish it fully before moving on. This inevitably leads me down ten different roads with ten different tasks with only enough time to accomplish maybe two of them. The math doesn’t exactly work. And the sum of this unbalanced equation is…lateness.

And late is exactly where I found myself, because changing clothes became editing chord sheets for church, printing them, proofreading them, playing through them a few times, listening to some recordings to make sure I was hitting that melody just right, etc. I needed to be across town in 10 minutes and I had failed to accomplish the one goal I had traveled home for: changing clothes! Needless to say, I panicked a bit, got off the couch and began darting all through the house to gather up the things I would need for both work and church shortly after. Grabbing my neglected work clothes, guitar, stand, music, jacket and Bible, I realized there was one other item I had overlooked: lunch. With a now-empty stomach and a dwindling caffeine supply in my blood, the inevitable downward spiral into low-blood-sugar land had begun. So I ran to the kitchen and added a box of Triscuits to my massive collection of needed stuff for the evening and hit the door.

As is customary when in a rush and carrying too many articles, I set a few of the items (including my Bible) on the roof of the car while I packed in everything else, closed the doors, hopped in behind the wheel, put it in reverse and took off out of the driveway. I remember hearing a noticeable sliding/scraping sound followed by a thump, but didn’t think much of it. My car is getting old, so I figure it just makes weird noises randomly. I feel like that with my body, sometimes…

Sorry. I got distracted…

So, about a tenth of a mile down the road, I saw what looked like sheets of ice falling from my car in the rear-view mirror. “That’s odd,” I thought to myself. “It’s chilly outside, but ice?” And at that moment, the terrifying reality hit me that I had left my most important and cherished book on the roof of my car, and it was freely spreading all the notes and junk I keep in it all over the road! Crap!

I turned around immediately and pulled my car into the nearest driveway I could find and went about the business of picking up the fallout that was strewn all over the pavement, stopping traffic and trying not to get run-over in the process.

And then I picked up my Bible. It looked like I had run over it with a bulldozer. Torn pages, chewed corners and unwanted creases now personified this book that I had tried for years to keep pristine. My heart sank and I realized just how hectic my morning had become. I was just trying to get some things done. I was just trying to be efficient. What if I had neglected something even more important? What if I had glossed over something that could have hurt me or someone else?

I refocused, took a deep breath, stuffed all the junk back into my now war-torn Bible, and got the car back on the road. It was kind of funny, honestly. Here I was, all dressed up for work, kneeling in the middle of the road, picking up what looked like an entire ream of paper off the street. I had to chuckle at my ability to be so stupid sometimes. I was good now. Wake-up call received. My head was returned to my shoulders.

Or not…

Only a few miles further down the road, my mind began reeling again. What about? I have no idea. What I was going to do later. What I was going to accomplish at work. Why that pesky box of Triscuits keeps falling over. Who knows? All I do know is the distractions returned, unrelenting, unwilling to give up so easily.

And they won.

While in mid-thought, I glanced away from the road for less than a second, fully confident that when my gaze returned to the road infront of me, everything would be just as I left it. But instead my eyes returned to a stand-still vehicle only a few feet ahead. I smashed the brakes and turned the wheel, but this circumstance was already playing out to the tune of my Ford Focus meeting the rear fender of her Toyota Corolla.

I didn’t cuss, though! I wanted to real bad, but I didn’t!

I did, however, lean my head back and let out a long sigh, as if to say, “Seriously? After the Bible incident only 5 minutes ago? Did you already forget that lesson?”

Luckily, it was a very slow collision and only a small amount of damage happened. No injuries. We both drove away and I didn’t get screamed at.

But I deserved it.

You see, my attention was diverted. Even after telling myself not to let my attention be diverted, it was diverted anyway. And in the shaky, scared-to-death reality that follows a car accident, I was quietly reminded of Jesus speaking to His disciples.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. (Matt. 6:33)”

Or, as The Message puts it: “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”

All of our needs and concerns attended to by following one simple command. Seek His kingdom and His righteousness. And what are those things? As this humble blogger sees it, it’s all wrapped up in Jesus.

In following Him, believing Him, and shaping our life around the Gospel He provides, we are seeking out His righteousness. All of God’s righteousness is in Jesus, and we are made completely right with God simply because of Jesus’ sacrifice. No addendum needed. So seek after Jesus and all the provisions and needs we have will be met.

It is the times that we forget this simple, mesmerizing truth that we get ourselves into our little messes. It is when we lose focus on the one and only thing that is worthy of our focus that we screw it all up. It is when the collective distractions around us swarm like a tidal wave and block our eyes from being on the lover of our souls that we fall.

But take heart: when we fall (as we always do), He is faithful to pick us up, dust us off, and put us back on our way again. And all he asks is for us to keep all eyes forward, fixed on Him, and to let Him handle everything else.

Sounds refreshing, doesn’t it?