“Regardless of our income levels, attention is our scarcest resource.”

A thought by John Mark Comer from his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (p. 53). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

It really is, isn't it?

John says, “Jesus wisely said our hearts will follow behind our treasures. (Matthew 6:21) Usually, we interpret treasure to mean our two basic resources: time and money. But an even more precious resource is attention. Without it, our spiritual lives are stillborn in the womb.”

He goes on, “Because attention leads to awareness. All the contemplatives agree. The mystics point out that what’s missing is awareness. Meaning, in the chronic problem of human beings’ felt experience of distance from God, God isn’t usually the culprit. God is omnipresent—there is no place God is not. And no time he isn’t present either. Our awareness of God is the problem, and it’s acute.

“So many people live without a sense of God’s presence through the day. We talk about his absence as if it’s this great question of theodicy. And I get that: I’ve been through the dark night of the soul. But could it be that, with a few said exceptions, we’re the ones who are absent, not God? We sit around sucked into our phones or TV or to-do lists, oblivious to the God who is around us, with us, in us, even more desirous than we are for relationship.”

He then says, “This is why I harp on technology. At the risk of sounding like an overzealous cult leader with spittle on his beard or a fundie Luddite with an ax to grind, I fear for the future of the church. There is more at stake here than our attention spans.

“Because what you give your attention to is the person you become.

“Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to. That bodes well for those apprentices of Jesus who give the bulk of their attention to him and to all that is good, beautiful, and true in his world. But not for those who give their attention to the 24-7 news cycle of outrage and anxiety and emotion-charged drama or the nonstop feed of celebrity gossip, titillation, and cultural drivel. (As if we ‘give’ it in the first place; much of it is stolen by a clever algorithm out to monetize our precious attention.)

“But again: we become what we give our attention to, for better or worse.”

And that is so true, isn’t it? 

Yes, yes!