FOCUS

The week before Christmas, just a few months ago, our kids and grandkids and my sisters who live close-by gathered for our traditional Christmas Family Night. Usually we do this on Christmas Eve, but this time John and Ashley were taking their family to Mexico to help build houses for the poor. So, we met in our home for dinner, followed by tradition: service sharing, a tidbit of wisdom from Gummy and Gumpa, and our Nativity. We end the night by giving the Grands their new Christmas pajamas.

About a decade ago Dave and I had given our children and siblings a sculpture of two hands, held out together in the manner of giving. We told them that we no longer wanted them to give us presents for Christmas. Instead, we wanted them to provide purposeful and meaningful service for others, then report to us what they had done. There is value in returning and reporting. Accountability is a fine motivator.

We now have a precious large album that sits on our coffee table at Christmastime, wherein are found photographs and stories and drawings of beautiful acts of service given by the people we hold most dear. Each family reports on what they have done, and then gives us a page for our album. It is a growing treasure.

Each year Dave and I give some sort of spiritual token to them. This year I bound Come Follow Me manuals, designed to help us in our scripture study, and an edition of the Book of Mormon that I really like. And I made these little magnets for the kids to put in their homes as reminders:

I used the idea of an optometrist’s eye chart to emphasize our desire to have them focus on their Lord, just a little more. We get so comfortable in our lives, if we are lucky. The demands of daily living, when not in crisis, drive us along the path of complacency. It’s human nature. 

What Dave and I wanted was for our kids and grands to focus just a teeny bit more. Not to overwhelm, but to encourage. It’s not hard to try just a little bit. I handed them this image, and asked them to focus while I counted. 

“Don’t look at anything else, just the dots in the middle.” I watched as the littlest and the biggest stared at their pieces of paper. Then I asked them to close their eyes and look into the black behind their eyelids. You can also just look at a white wall or a piece of blank paper.

Suddenly seven-year-old Joe let out a squeal, “Aaaaaah!  Aaaah! I see him! I see him! It’s Jesus!” His delight drove us all to laughter, and deep affection. The negative turns to a positive in our brains, and sure enough, an image of Jesus will appear if you focus long enough.

Then I handed everyone the following detail from the famous Sistine Chapel, where God, the Creator, is reaching toward Adam, otherwise known as Michael. 

“Look at their fingers.” I said. Look how close they are, and yet they do not touch.

I asked them if they had heard the song that says God will force no man to Heaven? Or if they'd seen the picture of Jesus standing at the door knocking, but there’s no door knob? How does He get in?

Parker replied, correctly, that we must let Him in, He will not force himself on us.

“So, here’s Adam, so very close to God, but look at his posture. He is almost too comfortable. If he just stretched, even just a little, he could touch the finger of God.”

Come on, Man, can't you stretch just a teeny bit more?

I asked the people whose lives and choices affect my heart more than any other if they could perhaps, this coming year, give a little more focus and a tiny stretch.

I was talking to our kids, but really, it was myself I was addressing.

Now, a few months after Christmas, I realize that it is not a difficulty for me to think about God in my daily life. Pandemics are great facilitators that way. I pray constantly for my friend in the hospital with this disease, which leads me to pray for his family, which leads me to pray for my family, and then the human family. My yearning heart, aching to hold my treasures, ponders daily how I might serve them without touching them. My siblings are constantly on my mind, as are my friends, and I feel strangely more connected to them through our shared isolation.

I see with a clarity that makes focus easier, because of the struggle we are in. I don’t hardly have to try, it’s a side effect of generalized suffering.

And as for the tiny stretch, I feel my spiritual tendons loosening day by day, stretched in my sleeping and waking thoughts. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that as I am compelled to resist touching those I crave, the ones I long to draw into a full-bodied embrace... the further I get from them, the closer I get to Him.

 (Covid 19 deaths to date 88,502)