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A New Heart for the Valley Week 4, Day 3

by David Joynt on March 13, 2018

A New Heart for the Valley Week 4, Day 3

LUKE 10:41

 

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things!” The details of entertaining can completely pre-occupy us, as they did Martha. Will the various elements of the meal be ready simultaneously? Will there be enough? What about food allergies and likes and dislikes? Are the guests having a good time? Are they relating? Martha had a hundred details on her mind as she entertained the Messiah, her friend Jesus. All of them were distracting, making it impossible to be present in the moment, with her guest. The same dynamic can happen at work or in recreation. It is enhanced by our distracting level of connectivity and availability for emails, messages, calls, and endless alerts. “Mindfulness” is the ability to be fully present in one moment without churning internally and without processing multiple issues and inputs.

 

 

Do you ever miss the moment or the person due to “anxiety about many things?”

 

How do you overcome this?

 

FAMILY TIME

When do you disconnect, as a family, from distraction?

 

Tags: anxious, family

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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