I think this year has got to my brain. Or maybe it’s just my brain… but I find myself somewhat distracted and unfocused.

At work I find myself starting one thing which can quite easily be finished in one sitting, and yet, I then find myself doing 5 other things at the same time.

Or half-doing 5 other things at the same time: and quite obviously getting nothing finished.

I’m distracted. I’m unfocused.

Perhaps the remedy is to close the email inbox tab.

However, I sense there’s a degree of fatigue in it all as well. Perhaps we’re all on overload a bit, as we attempt to re-navigate the school environment.

Staggered starts to lessons. Bring the students up from the playground and snake around the school to avoid other year groups. Sanitise hands when entering the classroom. Spray desks when leaving the classroom. The door remains open all lesson. Windows remain open. Apparently aircon can be turned on now, but frankly I don’t see the point in putting it on when the air is just going to blow right out of the room.

That’s just killing baby seals by global warming for no point.

I feel I’m getting distracted again…

As probably are my students. I doubt they’re learning anything much in the classroom with all the rigmarole going on around them, and such short lessons too.

In my prayer times this week I was reflecting on whether I had focus in my faith. Hard to think about when you feel distracted in general, but certainly worth the reflection, all the same.

And what even does focused faith look like? Is it being able to tick off tasks completed, like I do in my work journal? That seems a little too clinical for a ‘faith journey’. Yet how do you measure it? There must be some way.

Do a quick google search for verses about spiritual health and you’ll get a fair few, such as:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Colossians 3:16

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:5

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. John 14:15

You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. Exodus 23:25

Some of those make perfect sense. If we’re spiritually healthy we will be reading the Bible, singing worship songs, talking with other people about God, preaching the word correctly and with truth and obeying God.

Other verses surely need to be read in context. Physical sickness cannot be a sign of spiritual ill-health in all cases, though it may in some. And what would happen in my kitchen if my bread and water was blessed?

Those ones aren’t easy to ‘tick and flick’. Others are more clear-cut:

But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. 1 Timothy 5:8

It should be pretty obvious to ourselves and perhaps others if we are not doing as much. But then there’s the verses that we’re not sure how literally to take:

Pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17

If that’s the test for spiritual health, then we’ve got problems.

If you look through The Bible, before long you start noticing that there’s so many different commands and instructions about so many different things that, well… you can get a bit distracted knowing where to start.

I like the focus of Matthew 6:

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

An umbrella verse.

You want to be spiritually healthy? Seek God and what he sees is ‘right’.

Then your spiritual temperature will be fine.

Yours in getting out the thermometer,

Alison