Mindfulness

I have a wandering mind. I rarely live in the present because I am forever trying to figure out my past or worrying about my future. It’s crazy. A Harvard study discovered that most people spend 47% of their day with wandering thoughts. We are missing life. This study calls this state of wandering “perpetual slumbering.”

I have desired to live with mindfulness for some years now, and I am finding it very hard. I have bought journals and books to help with mindfulness. I have not used them because I am too busy wandering or wondering about “what now.” The term ”mindfulness” seems such an eastern religious term like Buddhist or New Age or something I don’t want to get involved in their practices. So I weave in and out of trying to be mindful and trying to be—-could it be legalistic?

Legalistic Versus Love

Legalism is a killer of many things, and the Gospels seem to say, a killer of all things Jesus. A sincere study of the Gospels, writings by eye-witnesses that spent three years in a close relationship with Jesus, teaches that Jesus was mindful and not in a hurry. Not in a hurry, even though he knew he only had three years to change the religious powers from legalistic law to faith and love. And Jesus only had a few “unlearned” men and a few women to teach the most important message ever given. Yes, the Gospels tell of him losing his patience with some and being angry at a few, but mostly He loved. He knew eternity past and future but stayed mindfully in the present. How?

It’s A God Thing

What made him go to a well in Samaria to meet a woman who needed to know she was loved and that she would never have to thirst for love again? Why did he choose one of many disabled and sick people waiting at the side of a pool in Bethsaida? How else could He be aware that someone had touched the hem of his gown or that Zaccheus was up in a tree? Or, for that matter, that Zaccheus’ heart was ready to be redeemed? Of course, he was God, and God knows these things, but isn’t God in us as believers? (I John 4:15-17) Isn’t God asking us who have accepted the atonement of Jesus to be Jesus in the world? Wouldn’t that also mean being mindful and aware of God’s direction in our life?

I think so, but I want to wander around in these thoughts for a while. I’ll let you know how my journey is going.