Distractions, Distractions

Hey guys!
Wow, is it June 19th already? I feel incredibly bad that the last time I posted was June 7th. I've just been letting time get the best of me, and I apologize for that. I hope everyone's summer is fabulous so far, and stays fabulous for the duration of what's left. There's only about a month and a half until I returned to school, which I'm starting to get excited about. I'm kind of glad God didn't give me as busy a summer like I had last year; even though I would love to have those paychecks again, it's given me time to unwind from the crazy semester I put myself through this past spring. Word of advice from me, you don't have to take it, because if I were you I probably would've been like, pshhh, woman, please. But still, here it is for you: seriously talk to God about your semester hours, and make sure He A-OKs them too. Because you can seriously let yourself burn out, which is what happened to me. And 21 hours isn't a good idea, even if you think you're awesome at time management and can push through with as little sleep as possible, because I tried it, and I ended up like a zombie in April. I totally should've been playing the Humans vs. Zombies game on campus. Except I think my zombie-ish body would fail at chasing people, it's a lot harder to move when you're incapacitated by exhaustion. Anyway, that's my two cents into scheduling, now onto the devotion.
So while I'm glad that God gave me free time, this past week I've felt in a rut. I was having a hard time concentrating on my devotions, and I kind of blew them off some days. GASP! I know, the horror. Hey, you all have done it too. I think it happened because I found myself reading some scripture that I already knew pretty well over again, and I was kind of like, I know, I know, and skimmed, and didn't dig in, yada yada. Plus, I've been watching t.v. like crazy, and I've been finding shows to watch that I never really watched before, and my interest was definitely in that rather than reading my Bible. But yesterday we had a terrible windstorm, and the power went out. And it actually,
was really nice. I didn't have a chance to charge my computer, so watching t.v. episodes on here was out. It stayed out for about 10 hours, so it gave my family some good bonding time, playing some board games, Dad beating me at Yahtzee again. I swear he has a magical way of shaking the cup and rolling the dice out of it, because no  person should get Yahtzee three times in one game, it's totally not fair. And after that......I got bored. So I read a book, and then two books. And then I became bored again, and so I started digging around in my room, and I found my old notebooks from years ago that I used to write sermon notes in. Man, it was awesome seeing things from 2005-2006, old memories of camp, and youth group cropping up. And dude, you could actually read my handwriting! Of course, it was the stereotypical girl writing, the big letters with the cute little hearts over i's and I wrote my n's as smaller capital Ns rather than n kind of n, you know what I mean. I bet all you girls wrote like that too. Maybe still do. I should probably go back to it since my handwriting's pretty much illegible now. Darn technology with never having to handwrite any papers.
Anyway, it was really neat to go back and read what I had written down long ago for me to remember, and obviously never did. And I came across one sermon that pretty much altered my spiritual walk for the better, and I thought I'd share it with you.
You see, I became saved when I was little. I grew up in the same church all my life, and when I was little, I was very excited to be one of God's children. I went out knocking on doors, inviting people to church, I memorized verses and sometimes entire chapters of the Bible. I was very zealous, but that zeal kind of became lost as I grew older.
Luke 10:38-42 is a well known story; it's the story of when Jesus visited Mary and Martha. Go ahead and read it, then come back to this. Read it? Okay.
So what's important about this passage is that there's a portrait of devotion, and a portrait of distraction. Now by deduction, I'm sure you can tell whose the devotion and who is the distraction portrait. Mary had no interest in doing anything else but listen to Jesus. Martha however, wanted to be the perfect hostess, which is what I was trying to do when I was little. We try to pack too many things, too many works, in our lives that we simply forget to listen to God. And when we get distracted, instead of devoted, we end up interrupting God's schedule, because the Spirit of God wants to work on your heart. Distraction in the absence of devotion then brings out accusation. In vs 40, Martha asks Jesus, saying, do you not care that she has left me to serve alone? We forget that the real purpose is not just to serve Jesus, but to listen to Him too, as Mary was doing. And we can see this in our lives too. Maybe you're helping out at the homeless shelter cooking and you see your helper just sitting and talking to a person who has come in for food and in your aggravation of being the only one left cooking you don't see the work that may be going on between your helper and the person they're talking to. The last part of vs. 40 is Martha pretty much commanding Jesus to get Mary to help her, which brings disturbance to what Jesus was telling Mary, and if you marched over to your helper and pulled them away from the person, you just disturbed possibly a very important conversation about salvation. You see, when you're distracted instead of devoted, you miss the whole point of what God's message for you, and it's easy to slip into that portrait rather the one of devotion. But devotion is important, Jesus gives it the highest commendation in vs. 41 and 42 when He says, Martha, you are careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful, and Mary has chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. Mary chose time with Jesus, and that's most important in our spiritual lives.
So that's my little thought, because it reminded of this past week and how I had not been giving Jesus my time at all. I hope this was something you may have needed, or may need in the future to know, or maybe just something good to read. It's good to share struggles with others; sometimes it gives you that extra push to overcome that struggle, because it's out there in front of your face instead of hidden away inside. I'm praying for ya'll daily, and I will definitely have another post next week! Until then,
tuteloo!