Focus and the Irony of Rabbit Trails

Focus. As I sit here contemplating this word, the brain fog sets in, and my weary eyes begin to blur the words together on the page. After looking at definitions and synonyms for this word...after reading verse after verse, my mind fractures into countless rabbit trails. Oh, the irony! 

Focus is a word that is both a noun and a verb. We may focus on something to "bring it into view" as it becomes the "central point of attention", bringing both verb and noun together. (See what I did there? No? Well, you see I took the two definitions...oh well, never mind).  

Focusing on this word brings to mind the One-Word Challenge. I have participated in doing a One Word Challenge for many years now. Some people call it by a different name. But the idea is to pick one word to focus on for the entire year...usually sometime in late December. Many who choose to do the one-word challenge look for a word that sums up who they want to be or how they want to live. 

I, however, tend to look at it a little differently than most. Picking a word and becoming that word is not my goal. Instead, I choose to begin praying each year in December that God would show me the word HE wants me to focus on. This was not a New Year's resolution but a year-long one-word journey. As I focused on the word throughout the next year, God would reveal to me the things He wanted me to learn in relation to that word, creating a change in my heart and my life. 

This One Word thing takes discipline and focus. Interestingly enough, FOCUS was my word in 2014. So, I went back through my journal in search of an entry on the word, and even looked to see if I had written a blog post about it thinking it would be helpful now that I was writing about it again. There was not one post on the blog, nor anything further in my journal about the word beyond the entry in December stating that it was my to be my word for 2014.  Apparently, and I might add ironically, I had lost my focus. Perhaps I need to refocus on the word in 2021. 

Oh but wait...that same year I had chosen a verse to go along with my One Word. 

It was my life-verse, Matthew 6:33.

But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well. 
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There it was. This verse "brought into view" the "central point of attention"...the very One I was to focus on. I went back through and looked at the articles I had written on my blog that year and I could see it...everything I had written was focused on bringing glory to God...seeking His righteousness and advancing His kingdom in my writing.  Maybe I didn't lose my focus after all...because the point was that I was not to meditate on the word focus, I was to focus on the Word...His Word.

Wow! My brain is tired from all the wordplay. But I kind of love it when the rabbit trail takes me back to His Word and to the gentle way He leads me. I'm so thankful that He is patient enough to lead me into a new understanding of this word...albeit 6 years in the making. 

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WRITTEN BY: GAY IDLE

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