Distraction

Thursday in the Second Week of Lent

Your adversaries roared in your holy place;

they set up their banners as tokens of victory.

Psalm 74:4

The email alert banners scuttle across the top of my screen catching my eye every time. So much so, that my friend with whom I’m zooming asks me if I need to attend to them. Like when your phone rings and the person you’re talking with says, “Do you need to get that?”

Slightly abashed, I assure her it is nothing. But it is something. It is a distraction that I have allowed, an invited disruption that pulls me from the moment so that I am cheating her out of my full attention. And I have given this distraction power.

In how many other ways have I set myself up so that my attention is scattered?

I am not yet halfway through the Lenten journey. There is time. Time to focus. Time to pray. Time to scatter the distractions from my path and fix my attention on goodness, on friendship, on what is life-giving. On the Holy.