Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks.

Where we connect the Bible to your life.

In the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jeff Parrot. One of the greatest temptations in the modern day is the

allure of being absent. You might be close to someone with a kind of physical

proximity but not actually present with them at the dinner table in the car with family or friends around the office you're there but you're not really there not with your mind your eyes your ears not with your emotions yes you're there but you couldn't be further away from the people with you.

Now there are many culprits for this tendency in our day of distraction, our screens, our schedules, our egos.

The list could go on. We have a presence problem.

But let's increase the tension of this issue a little bit because our distraction isn't just at the micro level of our day-to-day happenings with our screens and our streaming habits.

There's also a kind of macro-level distraction in our whole lives. How are you using your presence as the days stack into weeks and

months and years? At the end of your life will you look back and see that you were always

somewhere but not in a way that made a difference? Always present, but at the same time

always absent.

The challenge this poses is amplified when we consider the contours of the Christian life,

at least the Christian life as it should be.

I like the way that James Davidson Hunter defines a Christian in his book to change the world.

He says this, to be Christian is to be obliged to engage the world,

pursuing God's restorative purposes over all of life,

individual and corporate, public and private.

This is the mandate of creation. For Hunter, being a Christian is

bigger than just believing something or saying that you believe something.

To be a Christian is to engage the world. But not just for any purpose or agenda,

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