A Confession

I'm going to make a confession. Feel free to judge, apparently others have been doing so. =)

I can't sit still. Even when I'm reading which absorbs my entire mind to the exclusion of all else around me, I can't be still for long. I'm moving my legs, changing positions, etc. If I'm talking to you on the phone I am doing chores, walking around aimlessly, doodling, or playing solitaire on the computer. I'm listening - I just can't be still. I certainly know where my oldest child gets it.

So here is the confession!

I can't sit still in church. It's really, really hard for me to be a good example to my kids when I can't keep the ants out of my own pants. I try very hard to be still, but I HAVE to be doing something. Before the age of technology (or at least before I could afford said technology) I use to doodle on paper. But then I got a Palm. And the Palm came with several different Solitaire games on it. And I found that I could hear the sermon while playing one of those mindless games. I can tell you all of the points of the sermon. I catch the stories and get the points because I'm really listening. I just don't look like I am.

Today it was my turn to be in adult Sabbath school class (Jon and I take turns with Caitlin). The discussion hit on many things, but one of them was acting appropriately during certain occasions - such as church, weddings, etc. Someone mentioned the cell phones that have gone off during these times now that almost everyone has one. The discussion leader immediately went to using the phone during the sermon to play games or text. He felt that this was rude and disrespectful to the person giving the sermon.

Now just this week I was reading in I Corinthians. Paul was talking about people doing things that might offend someone else. He said that to some people a certain practice might not be wrong, but that if it upsets or causes another person to sin then we needed to stop (at least while around them) because it was bothering them. That's a super paraphrase, but I thought about this in Sabbath school. I can concentrate on the sermon, but this guy has sat behind us at least once and what if my playing on the iPod bothered him enough that HE missed the sermon? What if he made the assumption that I didn't hear what our Pastor was saying? 

So today I turned my iPod off and tried very hard to sit still during the sermon. I ate tic-tacs and doodled on a paper. It was hard, but if it helps someone else pay better attention to our Pastor's great sermons then it was all worth it.