Reading is difficult

Justin Taylor highlights this article in the Los Angeles Times about how much more difficult it seems to be today to read. In the course of trying to read it I flicked away to other web pages three times, looked at the adverts on the side bar twice, and scrolled down once to see how much farther I had to go!

Without doubt I have more ways to be distracted than ever - multiple advert breaks on TV, the skip function on my music player, internet available on my phone as well as laptop, etc. I think this has made me more distractable in general; so at least it seems whenever I try to get down to reading or prayer and find music playing in my head, thoughts running around in there too, little jobs that need to be done suddenly appearing... It's a struggle.

But just in case we want to bemoan this as a recent phenomenon, heed the Seventeenth Century poet and preacher John Donne: "I neglect God for the buzzing of a fly, for the creaking of a door, for the rattle of a coach in the street."

Looks like this is just another case of my human frailty needing the grace of discipline, I can't blame this malaise on Facebook after all.

By the way, if you got this far reading this post, well done!