time to think | Lst1984

I keep returning to the busyness and distraction I posted about a few weeks ago in The Boss in the Machine—and how, perhaps more than ever, I need to work at scheduling my time with God . . . until it becomes a genuine habit . . . what I would call an “unconscious competence.”

I know there are people who approach this another way; people in the tradition of Brother Lawrence and The Practice of the Presence of God who try to nurture an ongoing conversation with God that’s more notable when it’s interrupted than when it’s in progress.

Perhaps we’re approaching the same problem from different directions. I just know that if I am to “know Him” . . . integrating God into every aspect of my life . . . including my business and daily work life . . . then I need to have a daily, focused dialogue with God . . . not just a “moment” sometime during the day. And if I  allow technology to interrupt me moment-by-moment throughout the day . . . then why don’t I use technology to interrupt myself moment-by-moment throughout the day to spend time with God?

What would that look like? Early in my Christian life I read Psalm 119:164 where the psalmist wrote, “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws.” It sounded to me as if he praised God every hour on the hour through the workday. I wanted to do that! I happened to be in Hong Kong at the time so I went out and bought an inexpensive Seiko watch—I think it was called a Bellmatic—that I could set manually to ring an alarm. I set the alarm to the top of the hour . . . and it rang . . . I said a brief praise to God . . . and then reset the alarm for the next hour. It was that simple . . . and it was extremely effective at creating a routine for staying in dialogue with God in the middle of my daily work.

I think it’s time I dug out the old Bellmatic and got back to business with God.

Sad to say I lost that habit . . . probably when I upgraded to an expensive and technologically sophisticated timepiece. I think it’s time I dug out the old Bellmatic and got back to business with God.