March 4, 2013 – Proverbs 4

How hard is it to keep our eyes straight ahead and not look from side to side. The entire world is built on distractions and flashes and trying to get our attention for an instant. The world is built for the sound bite, the moment of pleasure, the instant gratification. And we all know, deep down, that it is not satisfying. We have all experienced the letdown of something that we thought was going to be so much more. When that happens, we have two chooses. We move towards the thing that can truly satisfy or we seek something else, usually something bigger and brighter, that we believe will satisfy us this time. But it will not. That is what it means to stay focused on what is ahead, to have a clear view of God and to not be distracted. Every flash or attraction takes us off that straight road to God and takes us on a detour. Sometimes they can be very quick. We see our error, we get back on track. Sometimes those detours can take years, sometimes they take over our lives, sometimes they bring us to eternal damnation. The world is not motivated to bring us to God. The world is motivated to bring us to ruin. Material wealth, pleasure seeking, relativism, are all paths that lead us away from where we truly belong, where we know (deep down) we will truly be satisfied and where we all were actually made to spend all eternity.