"Please turn off electronic devices and fasten your seat belt for take-off."

How about this: as you are talking on the cell phone, the house phone rings, the cell phone bings with email, then plays another sound for text message and your husband asks you a question. This is just a small part of life and yet all encompassing at times, especially when you are supposedly retired!


We need some uninterrupted time. "Please turn off electronic devices and fasten your seat belt for take-off." Never were truer words ever said. A sound mind requires this.


On airplanes, the pilot asks you to turn off certain devices below an altitude of 10,000 feet. The electromagnetic signals could interfere with vital transmissions to the cockpit. This happens to us too! The vital transmission from God via His Word can  be effected by incoming static if we don't give it our undivided attention.


So many things draw our attention.  We are bombarded by phones, computers, TV, movies (DVD or otherwise) and radio.  We are exposed daily to hundreds of opinions. We don't have to adhere to them, but they take up our headspace even when we disagree. We just drift along accepting and rejecting this or that without realizing how much time is eaten up by stuff that we can't do anything about.


Electronic communication is not bad in and of itself. There are great benefits, like being able to text a picture of a sleeping baby to new parents when they go out on date night, sending great Bible verses to someone who needs to be encouraged or hearing the gunfire live from the duck blind in North Dakota! I can fellowship with anyone any moment, any hour!


In order for our lives to be really rich, however, we need to protect our 'uptime' with God. He can communicate sometimes faster than a text message, but we have to be able to hear it. Wouldn't it be great if there was a device that would turn everything off by one single button (Do I need to copyright this idea?) 

Be eager to find out all about God and what he approves, a seeker of truth who has no cause to be ashamed, analyzing and correctly applying it to life. II Timothy 2:15 (my modified version)

By focusing on God consistently we can soar to greater altitudes (It's the seated-in-the-heavenies view. The world looks so small from an airplane!) and we are not so dependent on 'speed dialing' only in emergencies!