By Danny Minton

When I was a senior at Abilene Christian, I worked in the maintenance department parttime. To begin with, I mostly cleaned the air filters in all the buildings on campus and did minor plumbing repairs. I had been in every single dorm room in every dormitory on campus in the late ’60s. 

I was given one job that lasted only about an hour, after which I was kindly assigned to another task. The job I had was to stripe the road that circled from the men’s dorms, Edwards and Mabee, past Moody Coliseum, around Gibson Center, and straight past the back of McGlothlin Campus Center. Sounds simple enough, right? 

I started behind McGlothlin Campus Center and was doing reasonably well when I came to the curve at the end of the Gibson Center and made the turn toward the men’s dorms. I thought, “This is easy,” until I turned around at the end of the curve to admire my work. The straight line that I was drawing was so crooked that a sober person would have been arrested for DUI without even a breath test. It was a mess!

Let me say, I’m a city boy, born and reared where the lights shine on the street all night, and you hear cars whiz by in the alley behind the house. When you mow a yard, straight lines mean little; you just overlap and go on. No one notices that you were crooked here or there; it all blends in together. I had never plowed a field or done anything that required straight lines unless diagramming football plays on paper counted.

No one ever told me that you aren’t supposed to look down at the edge of the machine when going in a straight line. The idea, I learned the hard way, is to pick out a point in the distance and put all your focus on that point, walking straight toward it. The results are a much straighter line between the two points. When you fail to focus on what is ahead and only spend time where you are, you’ll more than likely be disappointed with the results. 

In life, we sometimes find ourselves taking our eyes off the true goal and getting caught up in where we are at the moment. When we do this, it’s easy to create a mess of things, leaving a crooked path with bumps, dips, and curves that might eventually make it to the goal, but make a mess along the way.

When I drew the line on the road, I forgot to focus on the big picture. I was too caught up in my immediate surroundings and only focused on the whole path after the damage had already been done. Christian men and women should always keep their goal in focus. They should ensure they are moving forward in the right direction and guard against getting caught up in things that can get them off track.

Satan wants nothing better than to divert our attention to things away from our Christian goals. He will send snags along the way. He’ll try to make us focus on areas that are only a small part of the goal, which in turn convinces us we are doing well until we take a breath and look at the whole again. A problem can consume us so much that we forget where we are headed. Taking our focus off the ways Christ taught keeps us from moving smoothly along the straight line. Constantly looking back gets us off track. Limiting our view of where we are headed in life, as I did by looking down at the line, can give us the false indication that we are doing well.

A few years back, I had cataract surgery. The first eye went great, allowing me to see things more clearly than I had in years. The second eye went great for two days. Then, a small tear developed in the back of the eye, causing it to be blurry most of the time. It’s like a smudge on a piece of glass, but it can’t be wiped clean. Failure to focus on the picture of our life that God wants can and will send us in all kinds of directions. Inability to focus only gives us a blurry vision of what reality is, and as a result, we lose focus on the whole.

We must always keep our focus, not letting Satan distract us from what God wants for all His children. Nothing should distract us from moving forward with God’s will for our lives. In Acts 14, when Paul was in the small town of Lystra, he was stoned and dragged out of the city, left for dead. He wasn’t, of course, but instead, got up, dusted himself off, and thought (inferred, of course) “that city really wants to hear the gospel,” so he went right back in, keeping the focus on the task at hand to tell people about Jesus.

If we live a life like Christ asks, we will have times of “virtual stoning”. We’ll be considered at times to be uncaring and unloving. We will be called names and blamed for everything that goes wrong. We’ll be accused, insulted, and talked about. Satan will make sure of that, but in all this, we must remain focused, wipe the dust off, and get back to work. 

One thing about my crooked line from over 40 years ago is that it is no longer there. It has long since been worn down, driven over, and faded into history. Even part of the road is no longer there. But I’m still here, learning from my mistakes and walking a straighter line. Our mistakes, the issues that weigh us down, the relationship problems, the money problems, and whatever else deters us will fade with time and correction as long as we make sure and stay on track, keeping our focus on what God expects of us.

I love the story in John 4 where Jesus is talking with his disciples, and a crowd is coming from the city. I have no doubt the disciples saw a crowd, but Jesus had a different focus. He didn’t see a crowd. Instead, he saw a “harvest” of souls. As Christians in the Lord’s church, may we be careful not to dwell so much on the things that we struggle with today and forget where we are going.

“Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.” Proverbs 4:25-26

Danny Minton is a former Elder and minister at Southern Hills Church of Christ