Come Outside
A recent Forbes article, How I Improved My Memory Over Lunch (by Kristi Hedges) clearly identifies a serious impairment of modern life. Consider these observations from the article:
“…we’re turning into a society that’s addicted to distraction.
“…we’re losing our ability to think critically, which also chips away at the human need to be contemplative and strategic about our work and our lives.
“…the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain responsible for decision making and control of emotions, goes on hiatus when it gets overloaded. ‘With too much information…people’s decisions make less and less sense.’
“…information retrieval has replaced memory as what passes for knowledge.
“The combination of powerful search facilities with the web’s facilitation of associative linking is…eroding [our] powers of concentration. It implicitly assigns an ever-decreasing priority to the ability to remember things in favor of the ability to search efficiently.”
When God revealed His magnificent plans for Abraham (and the whole earth), the Bible says that He first took Abraham “outside and said, ‘Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’” (Genesis 15:5)
For some reason, we humans seem convinced we can improve on God’s creation. We gravitate toward our own fabricated environments. We build it, burrow into it, become addicted to it, get lost within it, and finally, incarcerated by it.
So, when the Larger Intentions of God come to us, the first thing He says is, “Come outside…” away from what we have manufactured. To even catch a glimpse of eternal purposes, we must stand in the magnificence of the natural order.