Our attention spans are shrinking. We’re devolving mentally. We’re surrounded by an ever-growing attempt by media to maintain our attention by feeding us shorter, quicker, and more radical mental snacks. But it isn’t just Twitter, You Tube videos, and MTV shorts that are indicative of this demise of concentration. In fact, I see it most clearly in myself when I pick up a book, or attend a sermon. My ability to retain information is waning, and it’s not just cause I’m pushing 35. More directly, I find that I have trained my mind over the last 10 years to increasingly feed on short, small pieces of information. My training has paid off. My decreasing attention span has affected not only my desire to engage longer or more in-depth mental tasks, but has affected my ability to even recall what I learned.

What did we talk about two weeks ago at Uth? What was Pastor Mike’s sermon about last week? What scriptures did we pray over a few days ago. Where was that verse in the Bible. Where is my Bible?

We are trying to do something different at Uth. We are trying to go deeper, and engage in something that will have lasting impact. I am a firm believer in repetition, so that we can overcome the deficiency in memory through consistent reinforcement.

We’re not being called to eradicate all mode of learning that feeds on this growing condition of ours, but neither are we meant to accept it and move on as if we are not losing something important in the process. We need to challenge our ever shrinking retention of information. But am I just talking about information, here, or can I preacher-ize this…

Father wants to grow us, He wants to perfect us, and shape us in his image. The fact that we are ever-searching for the next hit of entertainment stands in the way of the building blocks we need to retain in order to become a fortress of God’s word.

What’s the application? Did you even read this far down?

It’s time to slow… and grow.