A Short Attention Span

Posted by Karen on Oct 10, 2011 | 1 comment

Like most folks who love The Sound of Music, I have seen the movie enough times to have memorized much of the script. The leading character is beloved because of her unabashed distraction with the beauty that surrounds her, continually bursting into song. There is even a song that others sing about her short attention span! We can all relate.

In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses publicly reviews the events and lessons of the wilderness years as the Israelites prepare to enter the Promised Land. In chapters 4 and 5 he warns the nation of forgetting God’s Word, turning to idols, and neglecting God’s law. And it’s no wonder that these three dangers are listed together, for idolatry and neglect will almost certainly follow the forgetting of God’s Word.

What can we do to improve our spiritual attention span? The same thing we do when improving our physical attention span: We learn to focus on specifics. Like an athlete who is to run in a marathon, we practice, we train, we become fit.

Colossians 3 (NLT) shows us how this is accomplished:

1. We let heaven fill our thoughts. (v. 2)
2. We put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within us. (v. 5)
3. We clothe ourselves with the new nature that Christ has created within us. (v.10)
4. We speak and sing the words of Christ. (v. 16)

So then it’s not just about the length of our attention span; it’s about our focus. And the overflow of our hearts’ focus should cause us to burst into song continually!