Contemplative Bible Reading

1 John 5:21 (New Living Translation)

Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.

John ends his first letter with a simple bit of advice.

Keep away from that stuff.

That stuff is anything that might take over our hearts. Well, certainly John could be a bit more specific than “anything.” How about a list, huh? No, times change. Things change. This is hot, that is not. One year its a Polaroid camera (some readers may need to look that up on Wikipedia), another year its an MP3 player (another thing to look up), another year its an iPhone.

Am I thinking about something much of the time? Am I thinking about some person much of the time? Yikes, we can also fall into that one. Are those things and those persons taking God’s place in my heart?

Let’s stay grounded in God. Stop. Breathe. Reflect. Do this daily or hourly or every minute or two. That old “what would Jesus do?” idea wasn’t such a bad one.