PAY ATTENTION!

Having worked mostly in a secondary educational setting, I noticed a trend towards the younger generation that I had not noticed before.

The best way I can explain it is by example.  When working in one college institution, I worked in student outreach.  We were constantly trying to create new ways of recruiting new students to our campus.  The Director came up with a brilliant campaign to send text messages to to prospective students on campus events such as recruitment and retention drives, as well as other campus events meant to draw crowds.  We sent text messages in text lingo to 1000s of people, in opposed to sending email messages like we had done the previous semester:  recruitment increased by almost 50%!

And retention had increased by 30%.

What the outreach team had come to realize is that many people today have short attention spans, not to mention limited time.  Harried, busy schedules keep people from taking the time needed to read and research matters.  Now, people hire people to do what -40 years ago-we did on our own, i.e., clean our houses, drop off and pick up dry cleaning, carpool, babysit, etc.

I have personally worked for people who didn't have time to read their own emails!

It is the way of the world as we know it today.  But is it a good thing?  A progressive thing?

There have been times when I missed an important email message-one I had been expecting-because I hadn't taken the time to check my email.  I have even worked as a personal assistant where our main mode of communication was text.

Text messaging and email is not the point here.  It is why are we as a society SO BUSY, SO DISTRACTED, SO in A HURRY, that we cannot PAY ATTENTION to the things we NEED to pay attention to????

The Word of God says that we are to WATCH and to PRAY.  In other words, PAY ATTENTION!

I do believe it is a ploy and a trick of the enemy to get people TOO BUSY and TOO DISTRACTED so that they are not able to WATCH what needs to be watched.  And if we don't watch what is needed to be watched, then we won't know HOW TO PRAY!

My heart goes out to today's teachers, for their job is truly a challenge.

They must get as much information into the kids as possible in a society that is too fast-paced, and too distracted, to sit down and have a good teaching session with them.  Nowadays, kids have Wii, Nintendo, PS3, and a host of other gidgets and gadgets that keep them overly occupied.  But this phenomena is not exclusive to kids...the kids learn this behavior from the parents.

Parents got their own gadgets, too. iPads, iPhones, laptops, PCs, Androids, and $500 cell phones are a household common commodities.

Instead of 10 TV channels on TV-like when I was a little girl-now there are over 500.  Access to all kinds of information (Distractions) are at the fingertips of most of the population.

And while we are distracted with our gidgets, our gadgets, our entertainment, our social lives, our religions and church services, our careers and education, our relationships/marriages, the enemy is behind the scenes, counting on the masses to stay ignorant of his devices.

And while we are all distracted-even with religion-the enemy will have 'the attention' of the masses...and they will do whatever he commands...thinking it is God!

ONLY those who PAY ATTENTION...who WATCH and PRAY...will not fall for the tricks of the enemy in this hour.