^{Let’s lift our heads to look around…to do good for others…to be in relationship.}

Hi everyone. I’m Sherry Douglas with Heart-Song. Before I share my thoughts, please know I am including myself in this post. I am no different than many of you. Our culture has become one fixated on the technology available to us – social media, phones, and any other device we find in our possession or available to our eyes. And ironically, I’m using technology to record this and you’re using technology to view this. If we slow down at all, our heads are buried in our gadgets. We scroll, text, email and view wherever we are – in school, at work, while we’re sharing a meal with someone, or waiting for an appointment. The distractions are numerous and because of them we’ve forgotten what it means to stop. To see people. To enjoy the beauty around us. To offer a smile. To help someone with a need they have. Let’s lift our heads to look around…to do good for others…to be in relationship.

In The Message, in Romans 12:1-2, the Apostle Paul states, “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

These Bible verses remind us that the consequence of distraction is to be conformed to what our culture offers. We can choose to live differently. We can choose to fix our attention on the Lord, and if we do, we’ll be changed for the better and impact our world. That, my friends, is an amazing promise.

Live the way you want to be remembered. See you next time.