Replacing Distraction with Readiness

 

        We are a distracted society.

I have seen this distraction play out in my own life in two ways.

The first way is with my tendency to focus on all the negative things that are happening in my life, in the lives of the people I care about, and even just in the world around me. I can get hyper focused on the struggles I’m going through, believing they are the only things that are happening to me. This was particularly true in the early days of infertility. With each month that went by, I was focused too much on the failed cycle that I had endured, the fact that even more time was passing without a baby in sight. I struggled to see anything good happening in my life because of it: good things in my job, good things in my marriage, even just the small daily blessings that God provides. It was this tendency that led me to keeping a gratitude journal, so that I could shift my perspective and see all the wonderful things God was doing in my life despite the struggle we were facing to conceive.

The second way is with my tendency to numb out when it feels like the world is collapsing all around me. When things are hard, when things aren’t going according to my plan, when God is asking me to wait for things that I don’t want to wait for anymore, I will find something to bury myself in so I don’t have to think about the hurt of that struggle. As with most people in our modern society, I tend to hide behind a screen: scrolling social media, playing a mindless game on my phone, binge watching a show I’ve seen a hundred times. I have noticed this behavior more recently, as our plans to transfer another embryo have taken longer than I wanted them to or expected them to. I’ve been frustrated with the things that have caused delays, I’ve been flat out angry about the fact that we can’t just do this like “normal people” and that our plans are determined by money and schedules and paperwork instead of the intimacy that most people get to enjoy in this process. And so I’ve hidden behind my screens, numbing those emotions and distracting myself from those frustrations. It got so bad that the Holy Spirit moved in me hard recently, just completely squashing my desire to open those apps and scroll. My screen time has significantly diminished lately, and I cannot credit myself with any grand plan to limit myself. The only thing I can credit it to is the supernatural power of God removing my desire to disappear behind my phone.

Regardless of how and why we’re distracting ourselves, all of it is caused by our inability to see the forest through the trees, focusing on what is hurting us and missing all the blessings that God gives us even in those hard seasons. When we are so distracted in these ways, we are not at all ready to see what God is doing elsewhere, and we’re not ready to receive His blessings unless they’re the ones we're asking for. We don’t tend to ask for green lights on the way to work unless we’re running unbelievably late. But it can still be a blessing God sends us to say, “I’m still here,” when things seem to be falling apart. If we’re not ready to see Him in those ways, we’ll miss Him all together, and suddenly we think He’s abandoned us.

Distraction is a common reaction to the anxiety that comes with loss and infertility. We don’t want to see the impatience, disappointment, fear, regret, or anger that comes with enduring such a hard path to children. And when we’re in the thick of it, we don’t at all want to start processing the idea that it might not ever happen. So we hide in distractions, focusing on all that we don’t have, exacerbating our anxiety because it’s all that we can see. If we can remove the distractions and approach God with readiness to see Him, no matter where He chooses to show Himself, we will be able to find some joy again, even in those hard seasons. We can remove the distractions ourselves- or we can get buried so deep that the Holy Spirit moves violently to remove them for us.

It tickles me that the first time Scripture discusses readiness is in a story about Abraham and Sarah, one that has been particularly reassuring to me over the years as an infertility warrior. This story occurs in Genesis 18, after God has made His initial promise to Abraham that he will have a son, and he and Sarah try to take matters into their own hands to fulfill this promise by having Abraham sleep with their servant Hagar to conceive. At the beginning of the chapter, Abraham looks out of his tent and sees three men approaching- this is after Scripture tells us that the Lord appeared to him in verse 1. So God does this through the appearance of these three men approaching Abraham’s tent. Abraham goes out to them and asks them to rest under a tree near his tent; he will bring them something to eat. They agree and take a seat under the tree while Abraham runs home to have Sarah “make ready quickly three measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth” (Genesis 18:6 KJV). Abraham also has a servant get a choice calf to prepare a meal for them, and brings them milk to drink.

As they are waiting, the men ask Abraham where Sarah is, and then one of them says, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son” (Genesis 18:10 NIV). When Sarah overhears this, she laughs. She cannot believe that, after all this time, in her old age, she will finally be blessed with a child, and a son no less.

This is when Scripture returns to identifying the visitors as the Lord, Who responds, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son” (Genesis 18:13-14 NIV). Despite her doubt, God doubles down on the promise that they will have a child.

There’s such a difference in this story in the way Abraham is “making ready” versus how Sarah is doing it. It may seem like the only thing being made ready is a meal for these visitors, but the posture with which these husband and wife approach these visitors shows how ready they are to receive what the visitors bring. Abraham recognizes right away that these men are from God and rushes out to tend to them. Sarah is so distracted by her burden of barrenness that she misses the clues that these visitors are special and stays back in the house, only making ready their needs at the direction of Abraham. While we don’t hear how Abraham reacts to the news of the promise, which is not the first time they’ve heard it, my guess would be he did not respond with the same doubt as Sarah, otherwise Scripture would have noted it to us. Sarah’s heart was not ready to receive with belief the promise that God had already made to her because she was distracted by the details: she was too old and so was Abraham.

I mentioned that this passage has been reassuring to me in my journey with infertility, and that moment that Sarah laughs at God’s promise, believing it to be impossible, is the reason why. We talked a few weeks ago about how Sarah is in the Hall of Faith along with her husband, credited because she “was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise” (Hebrews 11:11 NIV). We see in Genesis 18 that she laughs because her heart isn’t ready to receive God’s promise, but it doesn’t stop God from being faithful to her! Her faith isn’t perfect, but Hebrews 11 indicates to us that she eventually does open her heart to God and believe that He can and will do it.

In my study of the idea of making ourselves ready to eliminate distractions, I found a beautiful thread through Scripture around this idea: the bride of the Lord.

The book of Hosea is written by a minor profit to the tribe of Ephraim, which at the time of writing was part of the kingdom of Israel. My book introduction notes indicate that Israel is also called the bride of the Lord, and that Hosea wrote this book to reveal Ephraim’s sin to them. In the metaphor of marriage, it was like they had committed adultery because they had turned so far away from God. Hosea 7:6 says “For they have made ready their heart like an oven…” (KJV) “...their passion smolders all night; in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire” (NIV). In other words, they had given themselves over to their fleshly desires instead of turning towards God, and it would lead to their destruction.

The Hebrew word used here means, “come near, approach, draw near, join.” What is it that we are coming near to? What are we approaching or joining with in our daily thoughts? Are we drawing near to God, or are we drawing near to our struggles? If we are making our hearts ready for the negative things happening to us and around us, we run the risk of falling into the trap of Satan, giving into our desires and trying to take matters into our own hands like Abraham and Sarah did. But if we’re making our hearts ready for God, then we will have weapons to battle Satan when he tries to lay these traps for us. It’s no wonder so many of the references in Scripture where the phrase “make ready” is used are talking about warfare and battle.

Jesus uses this same image of the bride of the Lord in a parable from Matthew 22. The story is about a king (God) who is preparing a wedding banquet for his son (Jesus). The king sends his servants out to tell the people who’ve been invited to come to the wedding, but they refuse. On the second attempt, some of the people even take the servants and torture and kill them! So the king says to his servants, “The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come” (Matthew 22:8 NIV). So this time he sends them to bring anyone off the streets who will come, filling the banquet hall for the wedding of his son. Jesus finishes the parable by saying, “For many are invited, but few are chosen” (Matthew 22:14 NIV).

Another example of what a difference being ready makes. God has prepared a banquet of blessings for us! Are we ready to receive it? We’ve been invited, but are we ready to attend? The Greek word used here means, among other things, “receive one coming.” Jesus is the one we need to be ready to receive. Ultimately, this parable is referring to the return of Jesus when He establishes His Kingdom forever. But He also approaches us daily, with blessings, with invitations to fellowship with Him, with whispers to talk with Him. Are we responding with readiness? This is how we break out of the distractions of our flesh, look past our struggles, and see all that He has in store.

Someday, we will be invited to the wedding of the Lamb to His bride, and we’ll be invited because we are the bride: “For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready” (Revelation 19:7). It is while we are here, on earth, that we need to make ourselves ready for that day. The Greek here calls for us to prepare our minds to give Jesus fit reception and secure His blessings. We absolutely want to be ready when that day comes, but we also want to be ready to receive Him and His blessings now. 

We need to drop the distractions.

We need to shift our focus.

We need to be on the lookout for God to be moving in all the places in our lives, not just the ones where we harbor the deepest desires. 

When we do this, our hearts will be ready for Him daily, and for eternity.