I stopped long enough the other day to notice something about myself – I have trouble keeping focused in my prayer life for more than a moment on any one subject. I know, I’m the pastor – its part of my job to pray – but I began to recognize my prayers were like a pinball bouncing around the stratosphere of my mind back to the Lord.  So I began asking myself why I had this problem.

This then led to my noticing how I had trouble paying attention to hardly anything for more than a fleeting moment. I love to read, but I began to notice how I would read an entire paragraph, get to the bottom of the line and realize I had read an entire paragraph while simultaneously thinking about that other book I was looking forward to reading.  Or, I noticed how I would play cars with Judah (making the noises…rrrrrmmm) while also having a conversation with Andi about pre-school, all at the same time.

I walk down the streets of DC listening to the wonderful strings of Yo Yo Ma on my iPhone while holding a book and also typing a text message in between strides and sentences!

My mind is the equivalent of a Jet ball thrown into a closet…and I don’t think I’m alone.

I’ve really tried to pay attention to these patterns and I’ve recently tried to work against them. How you ask? Well, that’s going to be the subject of a few posts here.

I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I do hope to expose you to the same thing I have been exposed to.  Not only that we have scattered prayer lives (I already know you are aware of that), but we are scattered in virtually all of our thinking.

After exposing the breadth of our thinness, I want us all to feel the danger and recklessness of such a pattern, and finally I hope to provide some ways to try and work against this pattern.

Feel free to follow along.  If you find this helpful, great, if not, that’s fine to.  Part of my attempting to overcome this unhealthy pattern is by writing these posts, so in the end, I could be the only one that benefits, and that will be fine.  But I do hope you can be helped along the way.