A Shower Thought
My best ideas come in the shower. And usually the late-night ones right before I go to bed. Some of you might now what I’m talking about. You get into that shower, get the water all nice and warm, and suddenly your imagination comes alive.
Is it the steam? Is it the suds?
Honestly, it’s the undistracted time alone.
It’s the one time in a day (or days) where you’ve finally entered into a space almost completely undistracted. Your eyes have just a tile wall to look at. Only the sound of water fills your ears. Those shampoo bottles only have so much for you to read. And so we let our mind wander, and think, and contemplate.
I think these moments are even better than car moments, because your brain is completely disengaged whereas your mind still being distracted by the task of driving. And I wonder how many of these moments we are not taking advantage of because of our insatiable 21st century desire to be constantly entertained, constantly stimulated.
How many times have I missed the voice of God in my own life because I just couldn’t sit down? Luke 10:40 says, “Martha was distracted with much serving.” Are we imitating Martha nowadays too? Except by over-serving we are being over-stimulated? The point of Luke 10 is that Martha had Jesus Christ himself sitting in her living room, teaching the Word of God and bringing the listeners the beautiful revelation about who he is, and she missed it.
I even would venture to guess that in her busyness, she might have even been distracting others who were trying to listen in. Clattering the dishes as she put them out and removed them, nudging someone here, nudging someone there. If you’ve ever been in church on a Sunday morning you know how much the motion of someone merely getting up to use the bathroom can distract from the sermon.
Instead of recognizing the moment of visitation for what it was, she burdened herself with tasks and to-do’s. Do we wonder then that Jesus gently rebukes her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (v. 41)
Stimulation does not give us peace from our troubles. Distraction will never ease our own anxieties, however much we want it to.
Let’s choose the good portion like Mary does. She recognized the moment of visitation, when Jesus came into her home to teach her and sat herself down at his feet to listen.
My encouragement to us is this: let’s set aside time in our days to be silent and undistracted. Doesn’t have to be long, but long enough to allow your mind to wander, to allow your up-front task lists and anxieties to finally be shooed away, and to allow the voice of Jesus access to speak into our lives.
Do you drive with music or a podcast on? Do you wash the dishes with Youtube in the background? Commit to 15 minutes in silence, and let your mind take a break from the stimulation and chaos. In the summers, I enjoy a walk outside without my phone. This doesn’t need to be active prayer time, though if it leads to prayer that’s wonderful. The purpose of this undistracted time is not for us to speak to the Lord, but to give him the ability to speak to us.
And watch how the ideas start coming in. The simple solutions to the problems you’ve been worrying about. Revelation on a passage you were reading earlier that week. An “aha!” moment as your mind finally connects the dots on something that Holy Spirit has been waiting for you to do this whole time.
