Today's PAYG was the familiar Luke story of Martha and Mary, complete with the response of Jesus to Martha's entreaty that she was 'worried, and distracted by many things'. Those words seemed to resonate with me. I have lots to do, and lots of things that distract me both from the immediate tasks and from kepeing my focus where it ought to be, on God revealed in Christ.
In this story Jesus says to Martha "one thing is needed". In the story we heard on Sunday, Jesus said to a blind man "what do you want me to do for you?" I think there is maybe a connection here: what one thing do we require from God; what one thing do we desire from God and how are they related? Last night's Bible study looked at the John 15 vine imagarery, a favourite of mine, and we spent some time contemplating the part that says words to the effect of 'if you abide in me, ask whatever you will and it will be given you'. We noted that asking for what we want does not always elicit the reponse we desire, and there are no quick easy answers to that. Someone suggested that if we truly abide in God's love all else gains its true perpsective, and what we might desire will seem as nothing compared to what God gives us.
So then, the one required/desired thing? It is the constant searching, reaching for the heart of God, the cleaving/grafting to the rootstock of faith, the sense of being somehting bigger, more profound and more mysterious than I can comprehend.
I could (and sometimes do) blame the various concoctions of drugs and their side effects for my inability to concentrate as once I did but do so is slightly lazy... I do have some control in the matter. I am easily dsitratced by many things, but what is needed, what is it I truly desire... This Sunday we are exploring Psalm 90 and maybe that will the prompt for me - and others - to reviist our own rhythms and patterns of devotion, of work, of rest. Somewhere in all this, despite my fuggy intellect and distractedness, God is speaking quietly yet firmly...