Then I Took My Eyes Off God
It only took a second, but that was enough. Welcome to the next daily installment of this true story, which you can find posted here each afternoon until it comes to an end.
Chapter 72: Then I Took My Eyes Off God
The next two days — Friday and Saturday — were spent with family, mostly doing whatever family members felt like. Throughout it all, I started my mornings in prayer and checked in with God throughout the day.
Sunday afternoon, I would be back on the train back to San Francisco. Sunday morning, I went to the congregation I grew up in, where I attend services once or twice a year with family. It has always been a loving and wonderful church in which everyone knows everyone. During the part of the service called “Sharing the Peace,” which is done in some churches, it was not a rudimentary handshake to a person to the left and the right at my childhood church. It was more like a two-minute pause in the sermon in which everyone in the church walked around hugging and greeting and talking and laughing with each other. It was a glorious family environment, a really loving congregation to grow up in. At least that was how I remember it being.
There wasn’t much more than a little snow on the ground and a very particular attitude was for some reason on my mind: “I have to look good so I reflect well on my family. I have to look good so I reflect well on my family.” This is what I was thinking about as I was about to walk into the church.
What about how I reflected on my Heavenly Father at that moment? What about doing God’s work with undivided attention and instant obedience?
They are not always mutually exclusive.
But at that moment they were.
After I let out a few sentences of concern, a family member reassuringly even said to me “I do not care how you reflect on me. I am not trying to impress anyone.” Propped under my arm, under my winter coat was my Bible, my favorite Bible. I took my attention off that Bible and focused it somewhere else, on something stupid — what others thought of me.
My Bible fell out from under my arm and splayed open on the slushy street.
Instantly, I saw something, I instantly saw where my thoughts shifted. It had nothing to do with a damaged Bible. Or a momentary lapse of attention. It had everything to do with my mind going to an ungodly place after I had such a godly experience days earlier on the train. And I knew over and again that I can have a godly experience wherever I am, and whoever I am with, as long as I keep my attention on God.
A slushy sidewalk messes up the splayed open Bible that falls on it. The Bible, my favorite Bible that will never again look the same, with every crinkle of the stuck-together pages is a good reminder of how easy it is to lose focus on God. I am grateful for the reminder.
And I am not being too hard on myself. It has nothing to do with a damaged Bible. It has everything to do with how much there is to be lost by losing focus on God and how much there is to be gained if I can just keep focused on God and His will for my life. All I have to do is to keep that focus on Him above anything else. That’s it. I simply need to obey the command to not place any idol above Him in my life. Or as Jesus said, to love Him with all my heart.
Sometimes, maybe God lets us drop the Bible in a puddle that will permanently ruin the Bible. Just maybe He does that so that we can gently be brought back into alignment with Him. Just maybe so that we can remember how easy it is to lose out by taking focus off God. The Bible says that God disciplines those He loves (Hebrews 12:6). I cannot know if it was God disciplining me in that moment, but I know loudly and clearly, each time I open up my favorite Bible, how easy it was for me to take my focus off of God and to put it on something that deserved no consideration.
-Allan Stevo
This is a selection from my forthcoming book, “The Amtrak Vignettes.” A neat story began with the writing of “The Amtrak Vignettes” in October 2023. Every day until that story comes to an end, I intend to share a part of it here. It is a part of my faith journey as a Christian, a faith journey that has been deepened since the Ides of March 2020. Some of it gets pretty wild and nothing that a “reasonable” person would find himself in the midst of. Few will be scared off by it. Instead, many will grow deeper in their faith. I know that, because I know my readers well, and I know that few come here expecting me to give a milquetoast version of anything. Come here to be challenged. Stay here to have your life changed. That, I believe, is what will come of this work. You can support that work by signing up below.