The Sin of Efficiency

As i've been on a heavy schedule, I find myself multi-tasking to cope with the influx of demands on me.

For instance, I eat lunch and read newspapers at the same time, retrieve emails on my PDA with wireless SG as I walk to Kovan MRT and then read emails on the train ride to school, surf the web while chatting with others on the phone etc.

I strive to be efficient with the 24hrs God gives me daily. And I am extremely good at it.

But the sin comes when i allow this secular notion of multi-tasking that is founded upon the principle of efficiency to encroach on my spiritual life...

After i bathe at night, I always find myself standing in front of the fan in my room. I make the sign of the cross. I raise my right hand and palm toward heaven and pray. However the sin comes when, at the same time, I also hold the hair-dryer in my left hand - pointing the current of hot air at my damp hair so that i can immediately proceed to read/sleep after i pray.

It is very hard to find God in prayer with the drone of the hair dryer beside my ear. (You can try it.)

Where does prayer come from? Whether prayer is expressed in words or gestures, it is the whole man who prays.

But in naming the source of prayer, Scripture speaks sometimes of the soul or the spirit, but most often of the heart. According to Scripture, it is the heart that prays. If my heart is far from God because it is also concerned about saving time by drying my hair during prayer time, then my words of prayer of in vain.

This is thus one of my struggles for Lent 2008: to wholeheartedly focus my heart on God in prayer time.

Where I've been raised and trained heavily in the secular value of efficiency, I find it challenging to remind myself that silence/inactivity before the Lord is ironically one of the most 'efficient' thing I can do to gain spiritual progress.

-rhino 69-