32: Fast from Multitasking (Just for Today)
mul·ti·task
ˈməltēˌtask,ˈməlˌtīˌtask/
verb
gerund or present participle: multitasking
1.(of a person) deal with more than one task at the same time.
2.(of a computer) execute more than one program or task simultaneously.
Computers are what we use. Person is who I am
I forget sometimes who is who and what is what.
My practice of multiple and simultaneous attention to activities that aren’t naturally connected is now an ingrained habit. I listen to the news while I drive. I respond to text messages and email while I am winding down for the day with either music or mindless television. I play “Words With Friends” in between things. I have absorbed the behaviors of a computer as though I am one — as if the apps can be open and running in the background while the document is in the foreground.
It’s Lent — time to remember who I am and who I am not
Time to recall that I am created by God to do the work of building the Kingdom.
An opportunity to open the heart as the “app” that matters and close down some of the others
Days that blend into weeks to remind myself that the real challenge is not the illusion of multitasking, but the truth of “one thing at a time”
Fast from Multitasking — Just for Today
My threshold of resistance is high on this one because I live in a world that expects instant solutions to complicated problems. It requires me to juggle expectations, needs, demands and dreams. Lent reminds me that faith requires something else of me.
These days of Lent are days of change. Some of the change may take root within me and become permanent. Some may be passing whims or tastes of what is to come. And some may plant the seeds that will bear fruit later.
Just for this hour — these hours that make this day — just one thing at a time. I notice something when I “just drive” — like what I am actually passing and who is in front of me and behind me — not a car that is an obstacle, but a human person. Just one thing at a time.
There is something that happens when I SEEK…when I ASK…when I KNOCK — and when in doing that one thing, I BELIEVE that just one thing is enough and that there will be a response…just one at a time.
“Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
Matthew 7