“Squirrel!”

Did you look? If you were the dog from Pixar’s “Up” you would have. 🙂

Last Sunday at Grace, Pastor Isaiah referred to “shiny object syndrome” wherein a person is routinely distracted by a persistent attraction to a particular lure.

Some people get “lured” by beautiful bodies or lustful images, while others get “lured” by decadent food items or “sale” signs at the shopping mall. Regardless of the nature of our lure, it’s important that we identify it so we can extricate ourselves from its power. As many sad fishes would tell us, the lure is hiding a hook, and sometimes the hook is fatal.

What’s your “lure”? What attractions persistently steal your gaze away from God and His purpose for your life? This is an important question to ponder because the Bible teaches us that our heart naturally follows our gaze.

Job affirmed this when he plead his innocence stating, “If my heart has been led by my eyes…then may others eat what I have sown” (Job 31:7). Our heart follows our eyes and our eyes will either be fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) or distracted by the shiny objects around us.

Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness” (Matthew 6:22-23). Let’s resist our lures and invite God’s light to saturate our entire being.

We are more than Pavlov’s dogs; we don’t have to look just because someone shouts, “Squirrel!”