2: Attending Well to God and Others

How many notifications do you have on your phone right now? If you're like me, you likely have a dozen notifications at any given time, all competing for your attention.

We live in the attention economy, where powerful corporate interests have fine-tuned capturing our focus through our phones. It's scary that what we think about can be so easily influenced by private corporations. Our phones have become little distraction boxes, constantly diverting us.

As disciples of Jesus, one reason this dynamic should concern us is its effect on evangelism. Attention is the starting place for evangelism. We often think of evangelism as conversations we have with people, but before we can have those conversations, we have to notice people in the first place. We have to pay attention to them.

The question is, how are we attending to other people around us? Turning to Scripture, we find that attention is right at the center of our life with God. Our way of attending to God and our way of attending to other people are connected. Psalm 16:8 says, "I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken" (ESV). David is talking about attending to the Lord in his heart and mind.

Evangelism doesn't always happen during a scheduled time of 'going out and doing evangelism'; rather, evangelism is a way of being in the world. It's going through the world having set the Lord before you and paying attention to those around you, while being open to interruptions of opportunities to love people. Like the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, we can take time to see people who come across our path unexpectedly. Only then can we move from attention to action.

Sources:

Psalm 16:8 (ESV)

Luke 10:25-37 (ESV)

Leighton Ford, The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence in All Things (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2014).

Mary Schaller and John Crilly, The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations: Walking alongside People Who Believe Differently (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale, 2016).

C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory," in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, 1-15 (New York: Macmillan, 1949).

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