Acts 16:25 “Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. Suddenly, there was a massive earthquake and the prison was shaken to its foundations. All the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off!” Lately I feel like God has been speaking to me about focus. Three times a week I lift weights, and this morning I tried to proactively pay attention to each little task I performed, from my actual sets to shifting my equipment around to changing the weights on the bar. I unscrewed the safety nut with the same precision as a Japanese sushi chef cutting his finest otoro. That took some getting used to, but I struggled much more to focus in the spare time between sets. Usually I’ll squeeze every last second with other activities on my to-do list like stretching, tidying or responding to the sporadic email. That inevitably leads to a situation where I’m mid task when the timer rings. It throws me off, delays my next set, and diffuses motivation to perform. But today even when I had a decent chunk of time left, I stood at attention by the timer just waiting proactively for it to buzz. After a couple iterations of this I found myself praying and worshipping in the spare time while at attention. I also found myself lifting more in a shorter time through the course of the workout. So many times in our lives, we hustle to cram more and more into our day, not even realizing that the counteracting impact this has on our productivity, and even more importantly our intimacy with our Father. Today I feel God giving a picture of Paul and Silas waiting in jail, not chipping away frantically at the stone floors to escape, but “praying and singing hymns to God”. We of course need to co-labor with God, but when we start with intimacy, incredible miracles that far surpass the yield on our greatest efforts take hold. Lord, I love you. Please help me to create space to proactively wait on you and to focus on your goodness. In your son’s name, Amen.