Paying Attention

I must confess I have a bit of a fascination with the way people are so obsessed and pre-occupied with their hand held phones.  I watched a woman ahead of me in the grocery store check out line today.  She was so intrigued by what was happening on that tiny screen that she could hardly get her credit card out of her purse.  Her conversation was not with the lady in front of her, but with the invisible one to whom she was connected out yonder somewhere.  I have about decided that all this phone obsession speaks of an aversion to living in the present moment.  Maybe what someone is doing out yonder, or going to do tomorrow is far more interesting than what is right in front of her, but as she looks only at her hand, she is in no position to know.

 

Ephesians 5:16 tells us to make the most of the time.  I am not really sure making the most of the time is accomplished by multi-tasking, or by being able to know what other people are doing at any given moment.  Actually, it seems like such is more a waste of time than making the most of the time.  I say this out of a belief that anything which keeps us from paying attention to the present moment as well as the current circumstances of our life leads to wasting the only thing we really have which is the present moment.  One thing life does not give us is a guarantee that tomorrow is going to come for us.  The present moment is always the most important moment of our life.

 

In these years of retirement my mantra has become "Pay Attention."  I know I have lived many more days and years than I will live.  My past is far longer than my future.  This is not the voice of pessimism speaking, but the voice which keeps reminding me to live as fully as I possibly can the day that God is in the process of giving to me.  There are sights to see, feelings to feel, people to know, and a God who loves.  All of these happen only in the present.  I do not want to miss a single one of them.  What I might learn from what I can hold in my hand is nothing compared to what I can discover by simply paying attention to the moment God is giving.