distractions

do you ever wonder if all the things we have are only distractions?

take your ipod, for example.

i mean, i love mine to death . . . i can just put the earbuds in any time and boom! i'm listening to my favorite tunes.

however, by the same act, i'm missing out on everything that is happening around me . . . i'm unable to hear the voice of the world.

the voice of God.

i sometimes felt that my parents were needlessly strict and "stuck in the stone age" when i was growing up. i wasn't allowed a television in my room, was only allowed to spend thirty minutes on the computer each day, and didn't receive a cellphone until last year.

now, looking back on it, i'm glad.

and i know that, while i may not have enjoyed it at the time, it served a purpose.

that time helped me learn to hear the Voice. and, spending nights in my room writing in my journals or reading by candlelight, i was able to cultivate a much closer relationship to the world around me--and God--than most people that i can think of. my imagination was free to soar, uninterrupted by text messages or distracted by mind-numbing tv shows.

unfortunately, now that i live away from home and HAVE a television in my room and HAVE a laptop i can take wherever, whenever i feel like i've lost that connection. i feel like i've taken that relationship i am supposed to have to the world around me and replaced it with a connection to the virtual world--which, while entertaining, is not nearly as fulfilling.

do you really think society is that much more advanced that it was 100 years ago? 500? 1,000?

or have we just found more ways to distract ourselves from our true purpose?

i think miracles don't happen anymore because people stopped believing that they were possible.

i think your childhood dreams only become impossible when you decide they are.

i think most people never realize their potential.

so turn off the television and go for a walk. leave the ipod and cellphone at home, and just listen: there's a great big world out there with things to teach you. if you don't hear anything the first time, that's okay. try it again. it could take some time for you to get plugged back into the world around you.

i think people have lost touch with their natural place in the world--it's more than just a place for you to live and work. it's more than just a resource for your exploitation.

it's an adventure.

as children we understand that adventure and live in contact with our imagination--nothing is impossible.

we often forget our purpose and lose that optimism as we get older. we come to accept what we are given without asking for more; or we greedily ask for all the wrong things. either way we are cheating ourselves, unable to fill the hole in our hearts--either by denying its existence or trying to fill it with shovel-fulls of the wrong things.

maybe that's why Jesus said His kingdom was for the children.

maybe that's why Jesus said it would be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.

there's a Voice calling to you, just be quiet enough to hear.

and never settle.