When Mindfulness is a Virtue

Mindfulness. It’s kind of popular these days to talk about being mindful, being present, but what all these gurus are talking about is different than biblical mindfulness.

Author Julie Beck parodies this concept of mindfulness in The Atlantic:

You probably see stories and tips about mindfulness online every day. But did you realize that reading these articles is also an opportunity to be mindful? How many people spend their lunch breaks and commutes mindlessly clicking on these links? If you do it mindfully, instead, clicking on a link can also mean clicking on happiness…Relax the muscles of your clicking finger. Move your cursor to the link. Deliberately press down with your finger on the screen, the trackpad, or the mouse. Physically feel the click in your body. Experience the choice to read this content as a sensation.

The column, of course, was a joke. But biblical mindfulness is a virtue. Biblical mindfulness involves seeing God’s presence in your “everyday.”

Rahab didn’t know the God of Israel at first, but she was mindful of His presence in her “everyday” and that led to faith. Rahab, once a prostitute and a pagan, ended up in the lineage of Jesus.

In Joshua 2,  it tells the story of how Rahab took the men who were spies and hid them before they were even sought by the authorities.

Why did she do this? Mindfulness.

Joshua 2:8 Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof 9 and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. 10 We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. 11 When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.

Other people heard and their hearts melted in fear. She, on the other hand, was mindful of why she was melting in fear. She saw God’s presence in it and therefore she acted on it.  We can too.

So what about you? Are you mindlessly clicking on links and chugging through your everyday life, or are you mindful in a biblical way?  “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

Ponder today: How biblical mindfulness can make you a better Christian and the dangers of not being mindful.

Hebrews 2:1 We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.

Bible character of the day: Rahab