John 1.14

When was the last time that something held your attention for so long that you completely lost track of time? 

A couple of weeks ago, I was sick, with what I referred to as the Plague of 2017. My head was so congested and I was hacking up a lung - I had just enough energy to tap my phone's screen to watch the next (and then the next, and the next - well you get the point) of Downton Abbey. Before I knew it, I had watched an entire season worth of shows in a matter of 10 hours. 

When I was really into creating scrapbooks, the designing, cutting and cropping, the placement of papers and stickers would absorb all of my attention and just like that - an entire Saturday would vanish.

When I was in elementary school I would shut my bedroom door and play with my Barbies for hours - literally sometimes from lunch to dinner during the summer time. 

One phrase of John 1.14 has been rolling over and over in my thoughts: "We have seen his glory". As I meditated on this verse and especially this phrase, I kept thinking, "What would it be like to be so consumed with the Son of God's glory, that I completely and utterly forgot about everything else?" 

Don't get me wrong, I've had moments of worship where this was true, but then like a dream, reality sets in and it's back to whatever it was that I was doing before with only the memory stamped onto my heart. 

Brother Francis, of "The Practice of the Presence of God" fame has written:

He does not ask much of us, merely a thought of Him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for His grace, sometimes to offer Him your sufferings, at other times to thank Him for the graces, past and present, He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can.

And so this is my encouragement and challenge. Being captivated by the glory of the uniquely begotten Son isn't limited to a time and a place, it can be and is meant to be continuous. And in order to experience this, and dump the kinds of thoughts that only stir up trouble in my mind and heart, I must keep my thoughts on Christ, rather than on myself. 

If I can manage to do this, then the experience won't just be a fading memory, but instead a constant reality and awareness.