What Are You Focused On?

About thirty minutes ago I was walking back to my dorm after talking to one of my professors. As I was walking down some stairs, I was thinking about something I wanted to do. I had to step around a woman sitting in the middle of the stairs. I was really focused on what I wanted to do and--wait, a woman was sitting in the middle of the stairs. That was about how it was for me. I didn't even give her a second thought until someone going up the stairs asked her if she was okay. And then it hit me--she must have fallen while going down the stairs. Granted, she said she was okay and she didn't need any help, but still, I didn't even notice her. I was so focused on myself that I didn't notice a woman who had fallen on the stairs. I guess this made me realize that it is easy to be so focused on your own wants and desires that you miss the opportunities that God provides for you to make a difference in people's lives. Needless to say, I will be paying more attention to the people around me from now on.

Right Place, Wrong Time

Or should it be wrong place, right time? Actually, either one would work in this case. Two weeks ago I had a rather interesting experience. It was a little before 10 o'clock in the morning, which was when my first class started that day. I strolled into the lecture hall and sat down. I took out my notes and my pen and got ready for class to start. Nothing weird about that. A woman walked in and said "Good morning!" (quite a few of the professors say that at the beginning of class). Most of us said good morning in reply, but there was something wrong. The woman who had just greeted us wasn't my professor. That made me wonder if I had somehow ended up in the wrong class, but I thought it through and was sure that I was in the right place. So I figured she must be taking my professor's place for the day.

I decided to wait a few moments and see if she would teach the right subject, and sure enough, she did. That confirmed to me that I was in the right class. Everything seemed right, everything lined up--except for a comment one of the guys in the class made. He told the woman that her hair looked like she had actually washed it today, implying that this was not the first time he had seen her. That comment continued to bug me in the back of my mind as I took notes on the lecture. About 35 minutes into the class, I suddenly felt my stomach drop. It had dropped because I suddenly realized that I really wasn't in the right class. It was the correct subject, the correct lesson, the correct place--but it was the wrong time. The time I had that class was 2:30 in the afternoon. I was in the right place, but at the wrong time.

As I said at the beginning, it could also be wrong place, right time. This is true because I did have a class at 10:00, just not that class. So, I ended up standing up in the middle of class and walking out, which, believe you me, makes one feel very conspicuous. I then had to walk into my other class 40 minutes late. Overall, it was a rather stressful 40 minutes or so. And I am actually glad it happened that day and not the next day I had those two classes, because the next day was when I had tests in both of those classes. Needless to say, being late would have been really bad.