Pogo, a cartoon character from long ago, announced to his friends, “We have met the enemy, and they are us.”
We know the spiritual disciplines or practices that help us open up to God: meditation, prayer, study, worship, service.
The gap between knowing and doing can sometimes be easily stepped over and we proceed. Sometimes the gap is a chasm we cannot cross. Only to discover that the creator of that chasm is us.
We didn’t find that chair in the morning to sit and pray and meditate. We think we are not spiritual enough, and besides, we’d rather get another half-hour of sleep.
We set out that book to study and never opened it. We tell ourselves we are not smart enough to understand. It’ll be too hard. We’re too tired to think. We look at the book and then notice our phone. We pick the phone up first because it’s entertaining and easy. Then our entire study time just got sucked into the drain of nonsense.
We didn’t even bother to open a door for a mother struggling with a package and an infant or for someone handicapped struggling with a non-handicapped accessible door. We think that someone else will help. It’s not my job. Or like someone I was mentoring long ago, “I don’t care.”
There’s a word Jesus uses in the story of Martha and Mary. The Greek word of course can be translated with any one of a number of English words. I saw in one translation the word distracted.
That resonates. We allow ourselves (remember the story “the toy is broken” where we dodge responsibility) to be distracted by many things.
The opposite is focus. Sometime I sit before the laptop and find that I must take a deep breath and mentally bring myself into focus on the task. Or the same when I must repair something. It is my job to find that way to bring myself into focus on what is important at that moment. When something in you suggests an easy way out, tell it to take a rest, I have something important to do.
Faith Venture 
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