Do you ever have days when your mind doesn’t focus? Times when your mind flits here, flits there, can’t settle? That’s me today. Feels like "Seinfeld and Friends," “a show about nothing.”
The magazine “Scientific American” posted a conversation between reporter Karen Hopkin and Leonardo Cohen, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Their conversation is about learning to play the piano. Cohen: “We know from previous research that interspersing rest with practice during training is advantageous for learning a new skill. In fact, we recently sowed that virtually all early skill learning is evidenced during rest rather than during the actual practice.” Hopkin: “It’s during those intermittent breaks that the brain starts to sew together the individual movements that make up a seamless piece.”
Maybe the brain is busy, quietly making scattered things whole? Might this be why the Creator established the Sabbath? “On it you shall not do any work” (Exodus 20:10).
There’s something wrong with too much busyness. Covid has been a pandemic of virtual meetings. “‘It’s not sustainable,’ she (Angela Nguyen, a healthcare consultant) says. She has watched clients attempt to divide and conquer, hopping on for 15-minute cameos or dispatching various team members to different video calls. Then they sync up after—with another meeting.” (Wall Street Journal, July 19; A11)
In his weekly address July 18, Pope Francis said, “Let us put a halt to the frantic running around dictated by our agendas. Let us learn how to take a break, to turn off the mobile phone.” (“The Hill,” July 20)
Is God a man, only concerned about productivity? From Scottish preacher George Matheson: “O my Father, I have moments of deep unrest—moments when I know not what to ask by reason of the very excess of my wants. I have in these hours no words for Thee, no conscious prayers for Thee…. Thou hast received the nameless longings of my heart as the intercessions of Thy Spirit. They are not yet the intercessions of my spirit; I know not what I ask. But Thou knowest (a reference to Romans 8:26-27). Because I am made in Thine image, I can find rest only in what gives rest to Thee.” (“For All the Saints,” IV, 269).
God’s in heaven, the Spirit of Christ is in us. Let lack of focus be sanctified rest and peace.
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