Wonderful sermon last Sunday. Really hit home with me and I'm certain that others in the church at the time must have felt their spirits move a step closer in their walks with the Lord. My pastor, Barry Griffing, Jubilee Fellowship in Torrance CA, is big on praise and worship which is a good thing because Scripture clearly teaches that it is. A good thing that is. Well, the sermon was about "Uni-tasking".
These days Multi-tasking is exalted. A Bank of America commercial shows a busy mom feeding her children breakfast, paying her bills online, getting them ready for school and smiling all the while. Compare commercials and movies of today with those of 10, 20 and 30 or more years ago. Speedy of the Alka Seltzer commercials is too slow for today's audience. Images flash and scream past our eyes compared to then. Gatorade commercials top the list as far as I'm concerned but that is just "One man's opinion".
Watch the way some people with the remote control flip through TV channels and depending on their attention span spend either a few seconds or less than a minute on each channel. Short attention spans of children are diagnosed as ADD and the kids are medicated. The list goes on...
I could say more on this but I don't want to lose your attention.
Now, on to the Uni-tasking. When someone learns any sport what is it their coach has them do? Repetition of the same moves. Running through tires, throwing, catching jumping... When a person learns dance the instructor will have them doing the same movements until muscles ache. Learning music involves running through scales until the neighbors throw rocks through windows. The results of this uni-tasking style of practice is a wonderful athlete, dancer or musician. Without it mediocre would be too good a word for the results.
If we want excellence we need to apply uni-tasking before expecting excellence.
The Scripture passage Pastor Barry applied to this concerned Mary and Martha having Jesus over for dinner.
(From Luke Chapter 10:38-42 -NIV-)
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"
"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."
Thanks to Kris for the pic (see comment # 2)
Note in this passage Martha is multi-tasking. (Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.) Mary is uni-tasking. (Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.) - Jesus reproved Martha's actions not because he had a big ego, liked to talk and needed a bigger audience but because he knew Martha was really hurting herself through her addiction to multi-tasking. ("you are worried and upset about many things..." - Implied was, "Just sit and listen for a while...") Multi-tasking can bring with it worry, anxiety, depression, obsessive/compulsive behaviour. None of which are good for the human body. Another name for multi-tasking could be "The Martha Syndrome".
The sermon's real point was that we need to be uni-tasking. I think the high point of the sermon was Pastor Barry's lines defining Uni-tasking as doing the one (1) thing God wants us to do (to be doing) right now. This very moment in time. This very second. Would it be for us to be multi-tasking and be filled with anxiety or uni-tasking and listening to His voice? -
prying1 sez: Remember! Practice makes perfect.
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