Heb 11 Faith as Attention

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. — Hebrews 11:13-16

 

I was recently in a training for Spiritual Direction titled Rhythmic Living and Noticing by Troy Waller. In this session, Troy was emphasizing the importance of what we notice in our lives. The spiritual disciplines or practices that contribute to rhythmic living help us to pay attention to the right things. In this session he made a provocative statement about faith. "Paying attention equals faith, not what we believe. We have an attention problem, not a belief problem."

There is an element of this in how Hebrews 11 presents faith. Those who "died in faith" were focusing their attention on the promised future in a heavenly country. They did not think about the land from which they had gone out. The implication is that if they had been focusing their attention on that land, they would have turned back from the path of faith.

I can think of several places in Scripture that emphasize the importance of our attention. One is where Jesus talks about the eye as the lamp of the body. "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!" (Mt 6:22-23) The surrounding context of not laying up treasure on earth, not serving Mammon, and not being anxious about your material needs, all point to the eye as what you are paying attention to.

So, what are you paying attention to at your work? Whatever is right in front of us, what we are able to easily see, is what we naturally pay attention to, or we might say captures our attention. And those will be the same things that are capturing everyone else's attention. This is why it is common for Christians to have meaningful devotional time in the morning before work where they are aware of God but then spend their work day without any real awareness of God being present at all. Their beliefs have not changed from their devotional time to their work day, but what has captured their attention has changed. And what has captured their attention causes them to walk through the day with little faith.

So if we want to live out our faith at our work, we need to find ways to pay attention to what leads to faith, what leads to an awareness of God, during our work day. This is where spiritual disciplines or practices are needed. The purpose of spiritual disciplines is to direct our attention toward what engages our faith. Without this intentionality, we will continue to succumb to walking through our day with little faith and with little that distinguishes us from secular colleagues.