christian living on Attention-Spans

I was told that our worship services should be designed with seekers in mind, and that unchurched people have neither the attention span nor the interest to give to the reading of Bible passages. The ...

In June 2024, I (A. J.) had the opportunity to visit the Oregon State Correctional Institution in Salem, Oregon, to meet with a group of inmates who had read one of my recent books. The experience was...

In the Critically acclaimed 2018 horror film A Quiet Place , Earth faces an alien invasion unlike any other. In the movie, the aliens behave like merciless monsters, using their lightning-fast sp...

Compassion begins with attention.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

There is a secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.

Presence is experienced as a unitary whole. Think, for example, about the experience of sitting on the top of a hill, far from the polluting lights of a city, gazing at a dark, starry sky. Unless you ...

Be not only attentive in hearing, but retentive after hearing.

It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.

Listen for God, stop and watch and wait for him. To love God means to pay attention, be mindful, be open to the possibility that God is with you in ways that, unless you have your eyes open, you may n...

When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention-on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God-that he complete...

What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: i...

[Paying attention to those suffering most in a community] is a fundamental and paradoxical principle that goes to the heart of the gospel and the nature of eschatological existence.

Being heard is so close to being loved, that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.

We learn to praise God not by paying compliments but by paying attention.

The conclusion is straightforward: self-control requires attention and effort.

Our task is to help people concentrate on the real but often hidden event of God’s active presence in their lives. Hence, the question that must guide all organizing activity in a parish is not how to...

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

One helpful, practical tool to understand our blind spot is what’s called the Johari Window, an image developed as a counseling tool in the 1950s. Subjects were given a list of fifty-six adjectives, a...

Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.

Adoration is the spontaneous yearning of the heart to worship, honor, magnify, and bless God. We ask nothing but to cherish him. We seek nothing but his exaltation. We focus on nothing but his goodnes...

When I look around the American church today, I see two primary targets people aim at in their spiritual lives: activity and information.

Presence requires inner space, and talk about presence requires the same.

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

Lord, we come here with lots of things on our minds, but now we turn our focus to you. Help us to put aside our schedules and "to do" lists, and replace our worry with peace. Guide us as...

Anything big enough to occupy our minds is big enough to hang a prayer on.

Lord Jesus, we have been slumbering We have not expected you to be active in our lives And we have allowed ourselves to be distracted from your love We have not seen you in the lives of others And we ...

If we focus on our actions without addressing our hearts, we may end up merely as better behaved lovers of self.

G.K. Chesterton’s mind was so preoccupied that he frequently forgot to keep appointments. He relied on his wife in all practical matters. Once on a lecture tour he sent her the following telegram: “Am...