There is a line...

in one of the Veggie Tales videos where the Archibald Asparagus first announces and then criticizes Larry the Cucumber's sequential stereophonic mul-ti-me-di-a experience because it's only a bed sheet and a slide projector. In one of those silly things, the first time Husband and I ever saw that video, it cracked us up and has since become a family joke.

Husband has never understood my penchant for having a lot going on and usually all at the same time. It is not uncommon for me to have the television on in addition to listening to music through my radio and also blogging. It's all very distracting visually and auditorily to him, but it fits right into my persona of spinning lots of plates at the same time, praying that none crash upon me. Which happens.

I recognize that I like the mul-ti-me-di-a experience. Probably too much, because learning to focus and focus well on a particular thing has been a point of self-discipline for me, my whole life. Studying that idea in Matthew 22 this week reminded me of that essential point.

In Matthew 22:36-40 a scribe comes to Jesus to ask Him which is the greatest commandment. Jesus replies, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment."

At first brush this sounds like the instruction for a multimedia experience with a whole bunch of things going on all at once. The truth is in how when the Biblical command is applied of loving God completely with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind, then the result is not a scattered and distracted state, but a beautifully integrated state.

Salvation is known in one sense of being a slave to sin now set free through the redemption of the Savior. In a second sense though, one that I come to appreciate and give thanks for more and more, is that of having my fractured, scatterbrained, and distracted personality pieced together and conformed to Christ's image. As each piece is renewed and repaired, as sanctification occurs in every closet and junk drawer of my life, He makes me whole in Him. The temporal aspect of being set free from spinning plates so that I can genuinely focus and focus well on loving Him completely, with my whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind is a treasure of eternal worth.

I'll let Larry the Cucumber tackle the mul-ti-me-di-a experience.