Weekly News | 1.2.26

The attention economy is booming. An experience all adults share is that of looking at one “quick” thing on our phones or computers, only to look up 20 minutes later and say, “Whoops!”

Algorithms get savvier every day at holding our gaze. Further, the manner in which our attention is captured, dubbed “attention fracking”, has the added effect of diminishing our capacity for sustained focus.

If our attention was neutral, or if our defenses were greater (say, we got savvier every day), this wouldn’t matter much. But attention is never neutral. It’s part of the goodness of God’s creation. Our attention - what we notice and take in with our eyes, minds, hearts, and hands - shapes our loves, our character, our lives.

How can we be formed deeply in and by the love of God when our attention can only handle the quick hit?

The answer must be, in broad strokes, “by God’s grace,” and “with intentionality.” The good news is this is how the saints have been formed throughout generations - by God’s grace, with intentionality.

We need the Lord to show up. Our intentions, our habits, quickly become clanging cymbals when the focus shifts from loving communion with our Creator - and that is not something we can conjure. It is something we receive. And it is something He longs to give.

We also are invited to opt into proven channels of grace, to cultivate our attentions and appetites. God ministers to us through the sacraments. He meets us in community, most notably and reliably through those we would not choose. The Lord reveals himself through the Scriptures and the Spirit speaks in prayer. There is also a funny dynamic where God summons us through costliness - money, time, the mental or emotional or physical energy of leaving the house. When we have some skin in the game, so to speak, our attention is activated!

At Church of the Cross, our Sunday worship most succinctly captures these elements, and is our primary space of communal formation. The liturgies of Word and Table invite us into deeper formation, sustained attention.

It is both a powerful offering, and, we must acknowledge, it is an hour and a half of our week (if we attend every week!). Many of us would feel accomplished if we kept our phone usage to an hour and a half a day! (not all of that usage is bad, to be clear ;)

So we offer opportunities like JTerms (January) and Neighborhood Groups (beginning in February), ways we can opt into transformation. While JTerms and Neighborhood Groups are by no means not the only ways to live faithfully alive to Jesus and neighbor (in the history of the world, these are recent innovations!), they are spaces prepared for you to attend to life together outside the algorithm.

I’m grateful to those who are leading our JTerms. They are creating spaces that don’t seek to replicate the dopamine hits of the attention economy, but rather cultivate engaging spaces that allow us to attend to deeper questions that require sustained focus:

How might I understand and live into God’s love of my immigrant and refugee neighbors?

How can I hear God’s voice more clearly in my life?

How can I engage the intersection of the hand I’ve been dealt and the call to live faithfully?

How might delight in fiction catalyze my imagination for daily fidelity and virtue?

How is my work a locus of meaningful integration rather than necessary compartmentalization?

May the love of God take ever deeper root in us in 2026.

Peace,

Sarah+