Focus

July 31st in campus-ministry world means one thing: total chaos is about to descend on my hitherto summer-time feel of a placid and settled life.

My days recently are full of e-mails and details and planning and imagining and trying to remember to pray as I do all of it. It's all about multi-tasking and juggling and keeping plates spinning and trying real hard to not let things drop.

Today, in the midst of all of that, I blocked off the whole day to re-work my chapter that I'm contributing to the new Small Group Leader's Handbook that should be out by Christmas, 2009. My re-write isn't due for a couple more weeks but I know that once things get started on campus my life will be campus events and fighting to keep family time carved out. Not much room for hand-wringing over verb tenses.

There's a funny thing that happened as I approached today: I was really dreading it. When I'm in multi-tasker mode, the thought of slowing down to actually focus on any one thing for longer than 30 seconds feels really hard.

But a funny thing happened as I sat down and went to work. I really, really enjoyed it. What a tremendous thing to actually sit down and focus on one thing for longer than 30 seconds!

I wonder if there's some broader application to how we think in a high-speed world and how we are teaching students to think in a multi-tasking, multi-media world. The long, hard work of thinking deeply about anything is not something that seems to be valued. Or maybe I'm just hanging out in all the wrong circles.