According to a 2009 survey by Qwest Communications, 47 percent of Americans say they can last an hour at most before feeling "antsy" about checking email, instant messaging, or other social networking sites. Of those surveyed, 46 percent said they could only make it one day. The remaining 7 percent said they could probably go a week without checking in.

If any athlete was known for focus, it was Michael Jordan. In Jordan's book, Driven from Within, Fred Whitfield, president and chief operating officer of the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats basketball team, tells a fascinating story about something Jordan did while getting ready to go out one evening. When Jordan asked if he could borrow a jacket from Whitfield, he found that Whitfield's closet was filled ...

Adie Johnson, who serves on the staff of a small church in Colorado as Pastor of Spiritual Formation, shares a few thoughts about the power of group solitude:

I have found that one of the most powerful tools God has used to sculpt me in my spiritual life has been solitude, extended times set aside to be just with God. It was nearly 15 years ago that an older woman at the church I attended invited ...

We are too busy to pray, and so we are too busy to have power. We have a great deal of activity, but we accomplish little; many services, but few conversions; much machinery, but few results.

—R. A. Torrey, American evangelist (1856–1928)

Two commands direct us from the small-minded world of self-help to the large world of God's help. First, "Come, behold the works of the Lord." Take a long, scrutinizing look at what God is doing. This requires patient attentiveness and energetic concentration. Everybody else is noisier than God. The headlines and neon lights and amplifying systems of the world announce human works. But what of God's ...

Spam—a term used for unsolicited e-mails—accounts for billions of distractions for the average worker:

• Number of spam e-mails sent each day in 2006: 183 billion
  
  
• Number of work hours U.S. employees spent deleting spam in 2006: 22.9 million
  
  

Rumored notes from hospital charts (probably written by some sleepy intern or frazzled nurse):

• The patient refused autopsy.

• Patient has left white blood cells at another hospital.

• Note: Patient recovering from forehead cut. Patient became very angry when given an enema by mistake.

• Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.

• On the second day, ...

Describing the difficulty of racial reconciliation, one African American church leader tells this story:

It was my third year with the ministry. I got a call from a prominent white Christian leader, asking me to go to lunch with him. As we're sitting down to eat, all of a sudden this guy starts crying.… He explained that God had blessed him—his children were healthy, he was known throughout ...

We want to be a saint, but we also want to feel every sensation experienced by sinners; we want to be innocent and pure, but we also want to be experienced and taste all of life; we want to serve the poor and have a simple lifestyle, but we also want all the comforts of the rich; we want to have the depth afforded by solitude, but we also do not want to miss anything; we want to pray, but we also ...

I've asked my wife through the years to support me in different ventures. When we were first married, I was a youth pastor and was taking classes at the University of Colorado at Denver. And I decided, "I'm going to be a writer." So Jana and I moved to the Chicago suburbs so I could take a job as a writer and editor. About four years later, I became restless, so I began working on an MBA. I expected ...