Rhythms of FaithSample

PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT GIVES LIFE

The poet Mary Oliver said, “At­tention is the beginning of devotion.” This pithy statement gives rise to a host of questions: Where is your attention? Who’s got your gaze?

Experts call the world we live in—with all its screens, streaming services, and gas-station-pump ads—an attention economy. Every corporation you can think of is waging war for our attention. Attention is our most precious resource because it’s limited, and our gaze determines how we spend, how we act, and how we live.

Oliver’s searing poetic statement holds theological truth. Hebrews 12:2 layers the language of attention by using the phrase “looking to” (ESV) or “fixing our eyes on” (NIV) Jesus. In other words, we are to consider, we are to pay attention. Attention is not just devotion’s beginning but its continuation.

To grasp this idea, think of what you often do with your smartphone. You skim and scroll through newsfeeds and articles with a simple and often mindless flick of your thumb. To consider is to do the opposite—it is to pay attention with settled concentration.

Today, are you weak and weary? Could your weariness be the result of skimming Jesus rather than considering him? In John 10:10, Jesus says that he came “that they may have life and have it abundantly” (ESV). The key to abundant life is to fix our eyes on Jesus—to study him, concentrate on him, pay attention to him.

For the rest of this week, we’re going to focus on Jesus as our Good Shepherd. As we look toward Jesus not with a passing glance but with steady attention, we discover that he is a Shepherd who leads us to rest when we are tired, to nourishment when we are hungry, and to peace when life is chaotic. To trust the Good Shepherd is to live under his care, where fear does not have the final word. This is the abundant life Jesus promised—not a life free from hardship but a life anchored in his presence and secure in his love.

What do you “attend to” the most in your daily life? How can you attend more to Christ as a Good Shepherd who wants to guide and protect you?