What’s Holding You Back? (10-06-15)

So what are the greatest distractions in your life that keep you from focusing on God? What occupies your attention the most? What are those issues or things that steal your heart away from the most important? What are the urgent things that you pay more attention to than the significant things?

What might be some ways you could “mezuzah” your world; build reminders into your life that keep you focused on your spiritual existence, on God? How might you use your meaningful relationships to be a spiritual discipline, a way of focusing on God? How might you structure time into your schedule to pay attention to God (in both your daily schedule and long term calendar)?

A woman in Philadelphia several years ago was up in her attic cleaning. She spotted what looked like an old helmet lying near the Halloween costumes. She had never noticed it before. So she cleaned it up. It was beautiful! She wondered if it might be worth some money. After all, it appeared to be an antique.

So she lugged it down to the Civic Center where Chubb’s Antique Roadshow was offering people free appraisals of their junk. Greg Martin, the appraiser from San Francisco’s Butterfield and Butterfield, held the helmet, looked it over carefully, then proceeded to inform her that the helmet was a 16th century cabasset from Milan, Italy, forged from a single sheet of steel and covered with gold. It was probably a parade helmet.

The woman was speechless, until he told her it was worth about $250,000, to which she finally uttered, “Super!” And then she put the helmet back in her bag, asked not to be identified, and left.

Imagine a $250,000 helmet sitting up in the attic next to the old and moth-eaten Halloween costumes. No one knows what it is or the value it has. It just sits up there unnoticed, year after year. Why? Because you only see what’s in your heart.

How valuable is your spiritual life to you? How much would you like God to be in your heart? How much attention do you want to give to God? Are you willing to bring God down from the attic into your heart?