YOU HAVE GOT TO TAKE A MINUTE AND WATCH THIS VIDEO. THERE IS NOT A WORD SPOKEN,
BUT IT WILL SURE HOLD YOUR ATTENTION.
That’s the quote that grabbed my attention in a forward recently. And I did click on the link and then found this quote as the video loaded.
The Bear” is an unusually involving film about animals that will give you a fresh perspective on their world.
That’s a big claim, so I thought I’d watch. But I found something interesting in myself going on. I started watching and I found myself growing impatient as the seconds ticked by. The claim was that this would sure hold my attention and that it would be unusuallyinvolving. It should give me a fresh perspective on the world, but I’d watched for what seemed like plenty of time and nothing significant had yet happened. I was about ready to navigate away, when I thought, “oh whatever, give it a little longer.” The rest of the movie was kind of interesting. Especially the ending scene where the small bear growls and seemingly scares away the mountain lion only for us to discover it was a bigger bear in the background. You could definitley draw some Christian parallels there.
But what was more interesting to me than all that was my reaction to the video. I rewatched it and discovered that my impatience happened within the first 45 seconds, probably the first 30, because even after my internal dialogue I had to wait a little before the acton got going. Once the action gets going, I was involved enough to watch and think, but isn’t it interesting to see how quickly we make decisions in the digital world of today. I was ready to cast aside a video because it made big claims and wouldn’t deliver in the first 30 seconds.
Today I was looking at the bounce rate for this blog, and it’s interesting to see that a significant number of people hit the site but bounce off it in under a minute. That probably means they couldn’t get to this sentence before they’d left. So if you’re still reading, you’re a winner (kind of kidding I think).
This makes me think in a couple of direction in terms of faith. First, as we listen to the Scriptures I think of the psalms that constantly remind us to “wait on the Lord.” How good are you at that?. . . . Yeah, exactly. Neither am I. We live in a world today that wants to get to the action immediately. Like the video. It made big claims but wasn’t delivering right away, so I was ready to leave it, despite the fact that in the end, it really did give me something worthy. How often do you delve into Scripture and leave because you’re not getting an instant “wow” moment? How often do you see a promise from God and grow impatient because God doesn’t seem to be delivering? What do we need to do to help ourselves learn the process of slowing down and waiting on the Lord.
The second consideration is this. One of the things that made me impatient was the big claims in the link and on the site. I felt like I should be immediately wrapped up in action. In today’s world, we need to be careful of our claims in regards to faith. We’re dealing with people like. . . well, like me, who hear a big claim and then expect immediate action. So when you’re talking to them about faith, or your worship, or time in Scripture, be careful of how you “sell” it. Maybe God will deliver them some action right away, but we might also be wise to talk to them up front about the value of patience or about our own experiences waiting on the Lord. It may be countercultural, but it might also speak a word to them that will ring much truer than big claims which they might not “feel” right away.
