In this day and age, we’re expected to have ten-second attention spans. Think about it—our culture is focused on entertainment, but most entertainment is short and shallow. We easily get bored and move on to the next best thing. Because of this, it’s easy to get sidetracked from whatever we’re supposed to be doing and be distracted by unimportant and useless things.
Distraction is imminent in our world. I’m sure that you understand how stressful life can sometimes be, and we often feel as if we need a break. Screens and other forms of entertainment often like to grab center stage, and everything else gets pushed back. But is this how God meant for our world to be? What we need to watch out for, it seems, is how much of our time ends up being spent distracted. We need to be more intentional about being intentional.
Why is intentionality so important? God has always been intentional and precise with his creation and our world. When he created the earth, and even thousands of years after creating mankind, God is still intentional with his people. “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 12:30). God created his people, but he did not leave them alone. He cares for every hair on your head.
If you look at the opening chapters of your Bible, Genesis 1 gives us a step-by-step layout of how God created our earth. I’m sure you’re familiar with the passage. “Then God said, ‘Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.’ And it was so” (Genesis 1:11). Even from the very beginning, God created life intentionally. If he was careful and particular about his creation, then we should not waste the intentionality he has bestowed upon us.
From the very beginning, though, humans have taken God’s work and failed to see how intentional he truly was with it. Although God gave them everything their hearts should ever desire, they wanted more. We see a large example of this in the story of the Tower of Babel, just ten chapters after God’s creation story. “Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth’” (Genesis 11:4). We didn’t trust God and his intentional creation. We wanted to “make a name for ourselves” instead.
Where do we see God’s intentional design in our world today? Everywhere, friends. It’s in the sunshine breaking through the clouds on a winter morning. It’s in the text you receive from a friend just when you most need it. It’s in our families, intentionally designed by a loving Creator. You see, God’s fingerprints are all over his creation if we choose to stop looking beyond them and taking them for granted. He has numbered our blessings more than we will ever know.
So when we look around and see the little things that God has given us, we should make sure that we are being mindful of them. After all, we are created in the image of an intentional God! What’s more, we should praise him for the ways that he is intentional with us—praise him that he does see every hair on our heads and knows our every thought.
“Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.” –Psalm 145:3
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