Distraction is the concept in contention with life’s true purpose; the biggest, now global, trick of human history. This is as visible a threat as it is insidious. It is literally strangling our quality of life and we are helpless against it, unless we are awakened to our true life purpose.
Life, ironically, is a distraction from our purpose. Almost everything in today’s world conspires against this purpose. Not that we should reject our world and live as secluded hermits. But there is a force in this life that blocks our awareness of, and our access to, our purpose.
So, What’s Our Purpose?
Our purpose is to honour God by living our lives—not kidnapped by agendas-of-distraction but with eyes wide awake to the God-honest realities that are somehow subsumed by these agendas-of-distraction.
Allow me to put it in plain illustrative terms.
One example of distraction is entertainment; what is not clear about entertainment, however, is what distractive element takes us toward our purpose (for some entertainment is purposefully distractive) versus what takes us away. Most entertainment takes us away. For instance, we choose entertainment when we should be doing other things. Or, we choose the wrong sort of entertainment. Moreover, much entertainment takes our minds away from more relevant God-honest realities. We are all implicated.
Dismissing or rejecting entertainment out of hand, if we follow the chosen example, is not the answer; nor is merely giving in to the entertainment revolution sweeping the globe continuously.
There has to be a more compelling and effectual answer.
Frustration has no part whatsoever in us living our purpose, unless it’s part of the learning process. There’s little to be learned via the frustration of chopping and changing in indecision.
The Agency and Process of Awakening
Let us be perfectly clear that the awakening in view is no New Age concept. Such an awakening—the necessity of humanity to partake—is as old as creation itself. Adam and Eve, of course, failed their awakening test, as have and do we.
Awakening is nothing about failure, however.
It is, like salvation, an initial choice as well as an ongoing choice—the finances of the mind invested in focusing on what is really relevant, as well as learning what agendas-of-distraction we are to dispatch to the archives of previous currencies.
Awakening is truly about choosing to live the abundant life.
The Science of the Abundant Life
One of the most poignant things Jesus ever said about the nature of worldly life, and the countering nature of salvation, was:
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
~John 10:10 (NRSV).
Agendas-of-distraction are an example of the thief, among many examples. The myriad examples of distraction sway us away from true abundance—the experience of God breaking through our consciousness and awakening us to reality.
This is no subjective reality, but the reality.
It must surely be the greatest gift; to enjoy knowledge of reality. That is, to be at peace with it. This is where the abundant life begins. Indeed, this, not apart from the Saviour, is its source.
The abundant life journeys with simplicity. Having dealt with the distractions—those that would otherwise seal our fate as stolen—the simplicity of the abundant life opens up new doorways and new streams of thinking.
The abundant life is our true life purpose. It is no destination, so we must endear ourselves to it, rejecting distractions, and follow it passionately all our lives.
Perhaps the following quote of Isaac Newton’s encapsulates the whole article:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Ours is to look past the distractive pebbles and shells on the seashore and further yonder to the ocean of truth. There is where life is truly at; nowhere else.
© 2011 S. J. Wickham.
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