Anyone ever get distracted? Anyone ever find themselves plugging along, stop and take a few minutes to self-check your spiritual temperature and realize you have lost your focus? Anyone ever have good intentions of praying for a friend, a family member or a specific situation just to find yourself sidetracked within a minute or two of beginning?
Song of Solomon 2:15
New International Version (NIV)
15 Catch for us the foxes,
the little foxes
that ruin the vineyards,
our vineyards that are in bloom.
O.k. it's not often we get a devotion from Song of Solomon, but this verse hit me out of the blue yesterday. I'm sitting in the sauna at the gym at 6 AM in the morning. Nobody else around, 110+ degrees and a break from the stationary bike I rode to nowhere for the last hour. I start to pray for my kids, and within 2 minutes, I realize that my mind was somewhere in left field thinking about half a dozen other things.
I don't have a huge "C" and a cross tattooed on my chest.
That said, I do have the ability to recognize when, what might seem to be a random thought, comes from beyond my own little mind. I don't know when the last time I heard this verse might have been, but certainly not recently. Why the "little foxes" verse? It started to become a bit more clear...
What is the purpose of a vineyard, or an orchard, or a garden? The idea is the production of fruit (or vegetables), right? In order to realize the end goal of enjoying the fruit, there is a lot of work involved along the way. Think about it... your plants are thriving. They have healthy blooms. You are already imagining the satisfaction of enjoying the ripe fruit... then... some little critter comes along at night... a cat chasing a rabbit through your garden knocks off those low hanging blooms... a cute little green worm... gnaws the new growth right off... a gopher digs under your healthy plant and damages the roots... All of these little pests would be no challenge to "squish" if they came right out in the open in the light of day while you were alert.
Our life in Christ is a work in progress as well. The purpose of a relationship with Christ is to produce "fruit", to present an accurate picture of the redeeming love of Christ to those around us and to bring others to the saving knowledge of Jesus. Right? As we go along through our daily journey of life, there are so many little distractions that would be easily dealt with if immediately recognized. Left unaddressed, they can side-track us in a way that we are worthless from the standpoint of living an effective Christian life. The "little foxes" may take many forms from one person to the next. They are anything that distracts our focus from praying, reading the Bible, spending time in Christian fellowship and just living a daily life that would be pleasing to God.
Just as a literal fox would leave tracks or signs of its presence in a vineyard, the distractions that side-track us often leave "tracks" in our lives. Struggling to figure it all out? Take a look around those places where you spend time... your desk, your comfy chair, your "man-cave", your car/truck... From where I sit as I type, I see 2 catalogs, an MP3 player and a computer... all filled with distractions, if I don't recognize and address them.
It doesn't take a tornado or a late freeze to cause your vineyard/orchard/garden not to bear fruit. More often it's those little pests that go unnoticed and are left to destroy what you hoped would produce fruit.
