Solitude and Distraction

Q: “If superficiality is the curse of the modern age, what’s the curse of the postmodern age?”
A: “Distraction. With the Internet and entertainment, so many different ways to keep people’s minds constantly shifting, they don’t have to think. That’s why solitude and silence are among the most important spiritual disciplines for today.”

Q: “If superficiality is the curse of the modern age, what’s the curse of the postmodern age?”
A: “Distraction. With the Internet and entertainment, so many different ways to keep people’s minds constantly shifting, they don’t have to think. That’s why solitude and silence are among the most important spiritual disciplines for today.”
(Q&A with Richard Foster, Leadership Journal, Summer 2011, p.15)

Even as I’m working on this blog entry, I have an excel spreadsheet open with an address list I’m filing in, I just shutdown facebook, am snacking and of course have my smart phone sitting next to me in case someone texts or calls or of course to check facebook. (I proudly admit that I do not have music playing in the background. I think I am one of the few people left in the world that does not need or like music in the background while I work or write. Proud moment over.)

Richard Foster’s words spoke directly to me as I feel sometimes as if my mind is in frenzy. It is only when I choose to slow down, sit still, separate myself from the many distractions that normally exist in life that my heart and mind calm. There is something mysterious about solitude. We crave it yet it is at times a completely foreign concept and experience to us. Many times we even walk into it with expectations. Solitude is not meant to be productive (although it can be) and it is not lead by us. We are to put ourselves in a position of solitude and let God do the rest. Solitude is meant to be mysterious and just one of the many ways God meets with us.

Ruth Haley Barton in Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership says, “Solitude will do its good work whether we know what we are doing or not … we need to be careful off ourselves and our expectations. Most of what happens in solitude is happening under the surface and God is doing it.”

When we spend our time on surface level distractions, self created or just because of the reality of living, we do not give opportunity to the Holy Spirit to work under the surface. Many times we are afraid of what is under the surface or we fear that we do not have time to go there. We can choose to discipline ourselves and practice solitude or we may just find ourselves in solitude because a gracious God makes us go there.

He wants to meet with us and He wants to do deep work in our souls. If it is true that the curse of this age is distraction then we must battle and choose to enter into a time with God alone – no expectations – and let Him do His work on our souls.