Attention - Chambers, Oswald
1 Timothy 4:11–16
Attention is never possible without conscious effort; interest frequently is, we can take up a book and our interest is riveted at once. Naturally we never attend to anything, we are like children, and children do not attend until they are taught to. We all have certain native interests in which we are absorbed; but attention is always an effort of will. We are held responsible by god for the culture of attention.
The capacity to attend these things command and teach . . . (1 timothy 4:11)
Interest is natural; attention must be by effort, and the great secret of a christians life is the attention to realities. Reality is only possible where person comes in contact with person, all the rest is a shadow of real- ity. That is why jesus said, i am . . . The truth. When saint paul told timothy to command and teach, he was building his counsel on this capacity to attend, which must be by effort. We are always more willing to get ideas from books and from other people, which is simply an indication that we are not will- ing to attend but prefer to have our natural interest awakened. We scoop other peoples brains either in books or in conversation in order to avoid attending ourselves. One of our greatest needs is to have a place where we deliberately attend; that is the real meaning of prayer. Enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy father which is in secret. Prayer that is not an effort of the will is unrecognised by god. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you, said jesus. That does not mean ask anything you like, but ask what you will. What are you actively willing? Ask for that. We shall find that we ask very few things. The tendency in prayer to leave ourselves all abroad to the influence of a meeting or of a special season is not scriptural. Prayer is an effort of will, and jesus christ instructs us by using the word ask. Every one that asketh receiveth. These words are an amazing revelation of the simplicity with which god would have us pray. The other domains of prayer, the intercession of the holy spirit and the intercession of christ, are nothing to do with us; the effort of our will is to do with us.
The contemporary attention let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers . . . (1 timothy 4:12)
To-day mens attention is being screwed down along scientific lines; that is where the effort is being made
Think of the sweat and labour that a scientific student will expend in order to attain his end; where do we find men and women concentrating with the same intensity on spiritual realities? The majority of us are totally ignorant of the one abiding reality that demands our attention, viz. , our relationship to god, which should exhibit itself in a life in accordance with that relationship. The essence of sin is the refusal to recognise that we are accountable to god at all. The relationship to god must be recognised and lived up to from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet; nothing is unimportant in this relation ship. Let no man despise thy youth, paul said to timothy. Youth is a thing to be despised, a man up to thirty ought to be shut up in a bandbox16 and not allowed to speak. Paul is not saying, stand up for your rights; not, let no man despise thy youth because you are as good as anybody else, but by being an example in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith and in purity to all who believe the realities which you believe; dont be caught up by contemporary attentions. It is so easy to attend to the thing every one else is attending to, but it is difficult to attend to what no one is attending to. Paul did not say, pay attention to the greek philosopher, to the history of your people, to the thousand and one things that were contemporary in his day; he said, screw your attention with all your effort on the one reality, your relationship to god, and be an example on that all through.
The commiserating attention give attendance to reading . . . (1 timothy 4:13)
How many of us spend our time expecting that we will be something we are not. Oh the time is coming when i am going to be so and so. It never will come; the time is always now. The amazing thing about the salvation of our lord is that he brings us into contact with the reality that is, until we are just like children, continually seeing the wonder and beauty of things around us. The characteristic of young men and women of to-day is an affected tiredness of everything, nothing interests them. The salvation of jesus is not a divine anticipation, it is an absolute fact. People talk about the magnificent ideals that are yet to be; but the marvel of being born from above is that the reality is infinitely more wonderful than all we have imagined. Our lord taught us to look at such things as grass and trees and birds; grass is not ideal, it is real; flowers are not ideal, they are real; sunrises and sunsets are not ideal, they are real. These things are all round about us, almost pressing themselves into our eyes and ears, and yet we never look at them. Jesus christ drew all his illustrations from his fathers handiwork, from sparrows and flowers, things that none of us dream of noticing; we take our illustrations from things that compel attention. When we are born from above the spirit of god does not give us new ideals, we begin to see how ideal the real is; and as we pay attention to the things near at hand, we find them to be the gate of heaven to our souls. The reality of the salvation of jesus christ is that he makes us pay attention to realities, not appearances.
The souls awakening neglect not the gift that is in thee . . . (1 timothy 4:14)
There is a difference between such books as trines in tune with the infinite17 and the reality of life. It is possible to go dreaming through life till we are struck, not by an ideal, but by a sudden reality, and all we have ever pictured of what a man or woman should be pales before the reality we see. That is what happened when men saw jesus christ in the days of his flesh. The spirit of god saves us from the absurd futility of useless tears when the near objects have become far by making us open our eyes to what is near. We weep around the graves of people and things because we have never realised that we have to pay attention to the reality that is at hand. Take a lad who has become impatient with his home, he is sick of it, he cannot stand his parents, his sisters are prosaic, and he leavesthe best thing for him. Let him come in contact with other peoples fathers and mothers and sisters oh, yes, he much prefers them; but he will soon come to realise that the ones he has left are infinitely better. Naturally we much prefer the friends we make to our god-made relations, because we can be noble with our friends, we have no past history with them. This principle works all through. We long for some thing that is not and shut our eyes to the thing that is. When the lord jesus awakens us to reality by new birth and brings us in contact with himself, he does not give us new fathers and mothers and new friends; he gives us new sight, that is, we focus our eyes on the things that are near and they become wonderfully distant. Put thy distance on the near. This craving to go somewhere else, to see the things that are distant, arises from a refusal to attend to what is near.
Have i ever realised that the most wonderful thing in the world is the thing that is nearest to me, viz. , my body? Who made it? Almighty god. Do i pay the remotest attention to my body as being the temple of the holy ghost? Remember our lord lived in a body like ours. The next reality that i come in contact with by my body is other peoples bodies. All our relationships in life, all the joys and all the miseries, all the hells and all the heavens, are based on bodies; and the reality of jesus christs sal- vation brings us down to the mother earth we live on, and makes us see by the regenerating power of gods grace how amazingly precious are the ordinary things that are always with us. Master that, and you have mastered everything. We imagine that our bodies are a hindrance to our development, whereas it is only through our bodies that we develop. We cannot express a character without a body. This is also true of nature. We do not get at god through nature, as the poets say, we get at nature through god when once we are rightly related to him, and nature becomes a sacrament of his presence. Such books as trines start at the wrong end, they try to bring us from the ideal to the real; it is by coming in contact with the real that we find the ideal. Neglect not the gift that is in thee. We have to be careful not to neglect the spiritual reality planted in us by god. The first thing that contact with reality does is to enable us to diagnose our moods. It is a great moment when we realise that we have the power to trample on certain moods. Moods never go by pray- ing, moods go by kicking. A mood nearly always has its seat in the physical condition, not in the moral, and it is a continual effort to refuse to listen to those moods which arise from a physical condition; we must not submit to them for a second. It is a great thing to have something to neglect in your life; a great thing for your moral character to have something to snub. The expulsive power of a new affectionthat is what christianity supplies. The spirit of god on the basis of redemption gives us something else to think about. Are we going to think about it? By heeding the reality of gods grace within us we are never bothered again by the fact that we do not understand ourselves, or that other people do not understand us. If anyone understood me, he would be my god. The only being who understands me is the being who made me and who redeems me, and he will never expound me to myself; he will only bring me to the place of reality, viz. , into contact with himself, and the heart is at leisure from itself for ever afterwards. The first things a christian is emancipated from is the tyranny of moods and the tyranny of feeling that he is not understood. These things are the most fruitful sources of misery. Half the misery in the world comes because one person demands of another a complete understanding, which is absolutely impossible. The only being who understands us is the being who made us. It is a tremendous emanci- pation to get rid of every kind of self-consideration and learn to heed only one thing, the relationship between god and ourselves. In all the world there is none but thee, my god, there is none but thee. Once we get there, other people become shadows, beautiful shadows, but shadows under gods control.
The scriptural attitude meditate upon these things . . . (1 timothy 4:15)
Meditation means getting to the middle of a thing, pinning yourself down to a certain thing and concentratedly brooding upon it. The majority of us attend only to the muddle of things, consequently we get spiritual indigestion, the counterpart of physical indigestion, a desperately gloomy state of affairs. We can- not see anything rightly, and all we do see is stars. Faith is . . . The evidence of things not seen. Sup- pose jesus suddenly lifted the veil from our eyes and let us see angels ministering to us, his own presence with us, the holy ghost in us, and the father around us, how amazed we should be! We have lived in the muddle of things instead of in the middle of things. Faith gets us into the middle, which is god and gods purpose. Elisha prayed for his servant, lord, i pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see, and when his eyes were opened he saw the hosts of god and nothing else. We have to learn to pay attention to reality; one soul attending to reality is an emancipation to hundreds more. We are impertinently inquisitive about everything saving that one thing. Through inattention to our own true capacity we live as in a dream, when all around us and in us are the eternal realities. Attend to these duties, let them absorb you, so that all men may note your progress. We are apt to be busy about everything but that which concerns our spiritual progress, and at the end of a profitless day we snatch up a bible or daily light18 and read a few verses, and it does us good for precisely three- quarters of a second. We have to take time to be diligent. Meditation is not being like a pebble in a brook, allowing the waters of thought to flow over us; that is reverie. Meditation is the most intense spiritual act, it brings every part of body and mind into harness. To
Be spiritual by effort is a sure sign of a false relation- ship to god; to be obedient by effort in the initial stages is a sure sign that we are determined to obey god at all costs. Take time. Remember we have all the time there is. The majority of us waste time and want to encroach on eternity. Oh well, i will think about these things when i have time. The only time you will have is the day after you are dead, and that will be eternity. An hour, or half an hour, of daily attention to and meditation on our own spiritual life is the secret of progress.
The sacred attention . . . Take heed unto thyself. (1 timothy 4:16)
if we have been living in unrealities, we shall find ourselves faced with a great impatience when we do endeavour to face reality, and we are apt to behave like caged wild beasts. We have to take a grip of our- selves when we come to the true centre of things, and it means discipline and discipline, until we face nothing but realities. We have to exert a tremendous effort, and god is pleased to see us exert it. If you try and settle down before god in prayer when you have been dwelling in unrealities, you will recognise instantly the condition of things. As soon as you get down to pray you remember a letter you ought to write, or some- thing else that needs to be done, a thousand and one little impertinences come in and claim your attention. When we suspend our own activities and get down at the foot of the cross and meditate there, god brings his thoughts to us by the holy spirit and interprets them to us. The only mind that understands the things of god is the child mind (see matthew 11:25); our lord continually mentioned this simplicity (see mat- thew 18:3). It is the simplicity of god, not of an imbecile, a fundamental simplicity of relationship. God has not the remotest opportunity of coming to some of us, our minds are packed full with our own thoughts and conceptions; until suddenly he comes in like the wind and blows all our thoughts right away, and thoughts come sauntering in from the word of god. We can never get those thoughts for ourselves. They are the free gift of god for anyone and everyone who is learning to pay attention to him.