Focus

   I am sure that someone has done a study on why a person remembers a dream, or a portion of a dream, but it is interesting to me the things that I remember, at least for a little while, after I wake in the morning.

   For instance, what I thought of this early morning was trying to get a camera shot. There was the scene and the situation, there was one person that I recognized, Sawyer, and there was the shot that I wanted to capture on film. Well, not really film, but on the memory card. I can't remember the whys of that brief time in the dream, but just the activity of trying to get it right and not actually pressing the shutter. Either my dream shifted or I woke up, but I did not take the picture.

   I was trying to get everything in focus so that I might have the shot right. So many people in the scene, so many things going on around me and in front of the lens, but if I wanted to freeze a particular moment to remember, I would have to concentrate my whole thought process on what I was trying to accomplish.

   I would need to see the scene and then focus.

   Sometimes the clutter of my life seems to make it difficult to focus on the important things. Even in the quiet of early morning, before the world wakes up and starts to move about, my thoughts seem to run amok. They are drawn to events of the past or projections of the future. Even as I sit and read the Scripture passages, my mind tends to focus on everything but what the words on the page actually mean.

   I need focus, not only in this time, but in life. Not just in what I want to do in this minute, hour, day, year or life, but what The One who gives me this life wants me to do. Just as I want my life to matter, I want these quiet moments to matter, moments that will set the pattern for my day and the days to come. I want to come away from this time with a sense of purpose and an assurance that I am going in the right direction.

   The first thing each morning, I write out a brief prayer of how I feel and what I want from this time. This is what I wrote an hour or so ago:

Not just so I can write, but that I can change, from the inside out.
That the creator of the universe would visit with me, to make me His.

That He would get me out of myself and into Him.
That I would be transformed into a man after His own heart.
That the encounter would give me more than just something to write.
That it would give me an assurance that I was His.
That it would matter over the long haul, not just for the moment.
These are my prayers, Oh, God.

   And, I might add, at the end of this time, That I might have focus.

   Amen and Amen