Hiccup Distractions

I was driving in the car with my kids, and my oldest son who is six said that he had the hiccups. He was pretty upset over them and begged me for a remedy. Since I was driving and there’s not much you can do for hiccups, I started telling him to do random things.

“Hold your breath, wave your arms and then yell as loud as you can,” I said.

He did this and nothing happened. “Look out the window and cough twenty times then stomp your feet for one minute.”

Again the hiccups came back. “Try to make yourself sneeze,” I finally added, “hoping that would distract him long enough to quiet his constant belly-aching from the backseat.”

As my son tried to figure out how to sneeze, I wondered if that was how all the crazy remedies for the hiccups were created. A poor mother may have been in the middle of milking a cow, hemming a dress or plucking a chicken, and she needed some peace and quiet for a moment so she could concentrate. She’d tell her child to go drink from a cup backward.

Her child — eager to get rid of the pesky hiccups — runs into the house for half an hour trying to figure out how not to spill water all over, hoping to quiet the spasm in his diaphragm.

Then I thought many Christians are doing that. The Enemy distracts us with worries, pleasures and money in order to keep us away from our main purpose: Knowing and loving God. I don’t want to run around doing fruitless acts to fulfill the desires of my heart; I want to follow after God and fulfill the calling He has for me.

I am determined not to allow myself to be distracted by Enemy’s schemes. It’s impossible to drink from a cup backward!

Memory Verse:
“Then the cares and anxieties of the world and distractions of the age, and the pleasure and delight and false glamour and deceitfulness of riches, and the craving and passionate desire for other things creep in and choke and suffocate the Word, and it becomes fruitless.”
– Mark 4:19 (AMP)

Prayer Prompt:
“Father, please help me not to get distracted by the things of this world. I want to enjoy the blessings You have for me, but I also want to finish the race that You have laid out for my life. Please rid me of any distractions, including…”

Contributing Writer:
Alisa Hope Wagner
Faith Imagined