Mark 4:18-19
It
is easy to get distracted. You don’t even have to have ADD, Attention Deficit
Disorder, to fall victim. Right now the biggest distracters for most people are
their electronic devices. Researchers are discovering that our sleep is
suffering as we wake either in anticipation of a text or to respond to a text.
This is especially true for younger people, but we older folks aren’t exempt
from this distraction. They have also found that many of us watch TV and play
with another device at the same time. We aren’t content to just do one thing.
We now need multiple things going on at the same time in order to feel alive.
Maybe they will come up with a new disorder, Attention Distraction Disorder!
Life
becomes difficult because life requires focus for most people. If there isn’t
immediate positive feedback, the little bells and chimes of the cell phones and
online games, then we get stimulation depraved and we reach for the electronics
to get our fix.
Jesus
likens these distractions to weeds that grow up around the seed. In our parable
the seed is planted, it begins growing, but it doesn’t bring any fruit because
the weeds choke it out. The growth potential gets stifled. There are plants,
but they are of no use, since they didn’t produce their crop. They took up
space, sun, water, and nutrients, but they didn’t fulfill their intended
purpose. They look as though they are going to bring fruit, but that hope is
not fulfilled.
Notice
what happens. The cares of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth, not
wealth itself, gets them in trouble. Wealth promises so much, but it delivers
very little of what is really meaningful and eternal. But it can also solve
many of the day to day cares and concerns. Paying the bills, keeping your head
above water, can be a full time concern, especially when you see the big waves
coming. But there is a fine line between our view of wealth and letting it deceive
us. We can begin to think that wealth can solve all our problems, rather than
the LORD.
And
yet we live in the middle of wealth. Money touches every area of our lives.
Every day we must fight this battle to keep from being distracted by the pull
of wealth. And when they get distracted, they stop producing fruit. It makes no
sense to waste seed if you are not going to get and crop. If you don’t produce
grain you miss the whole goal of planting.
People
who get distracted don’t fulfill the design the LORD has for their life. Their
life is wasted.