Focus Friday: Let’s Focus on Watching Out for the Shift

I made a mess in the Dollar General parking lot the other night. All because I wasn’t watching out for the shift.

I was coming home from picking up our son Dylan from college and we decided to stop and say hi to Blake (our other son) while he was working. Dylan got out and opened the back door to grab his coat and…smash!

I was so confused at first. What could have broken? He didn’t have any lamps or vases he was bringing home for Christmas break. I rounded the back of the Mariner and saw a jar of spaghetti sauce—in many, many pieces. Oops!

It seems I had thrown some groceries in on the back seat and they had shifted as we covered the miles between Orange City, Iowa and home. When the door opened, the jar fell.

So, instead of a happy reunion between brothers, our stop at Dollar General turned into, “Blake, do you have a dustpan and something I can use to scoop up a jar of spaghetti sauce in the parking lot?”

I hadn’t been watching out for the shift, and I wasted time and money because of it.

I definitely should have put the bag with the jars on the floor instead of on the seat. On the floor they would have stayed in the vehicle, even if they had moved around a little with all of the stops and starts and twists and turns of the drive.

Up on the seat was a precarious place for breakable things.

I’ve been thinking ever since that little mishap. There are parts of us that can get broken if we aren’t careful. Emotions and feelings that are much more precious than a jar of sauce.

When we let our thoughts and emotions go wherever they want, there’s a high probability that they will shift during all of the stops and starts and twists and turns of life. We might end up hurting ourselves or others when that shift leads to brokenness.

If we keep our thoughts set on the foundation (for me, that’s the Bible), then there’s little risk of damage, even if they move around a bit. When we’re focused on what God says, we have a greater chance of staying safe and whole.

Watch out for the shift, my friends, especially if you’ve wandered far from that firm foundation.

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock [or a wise woman who puts her spaghetti sauce on the floor].” (Matthew 7:24 NIV, brackets mine)

Are your thoughts resting on a firm foundation, or are they in danger of shifting? How can focusing on God help you to think wisely and stay safe and whole?