Practice to Notice

“Our culture has influenced us to see, hear, and notice certain things and ignore others. We tend to notice temporal things like new cars, consumer products that will improve our lives… – isn’t it amazing how we can notice discount? We notice people’s faults and sometimes enjoy poking fun at those faults… We notice successful people yet fail to notice that behind the veneer of confidence and certitude are often brokenness and dysfunction. As people who desire to live more intently in tune with God, the challenge is to retrain our eyes, our hearts and our ears to see life differently from what the world puts on our platter. When we begin to see life differently and more deeply, I believe we will find ourselves challenged to live more faithfully, passionately, and intentionally…”

The above are excerpts from a book titled Spotting the Sacred by Bruce Main.

Living in the city, one cannot escape the reality of being stuck in queues. I found myself at the post office waiting to be served. So I decided to read the book mentioned above. As I was reading the part about children, the lady beside me started to complain about the rowdy kids that a couple brought, to her companion. She scoffed at how the parents brought the whole family and was having an outing there. The children were loud, noisy and basically there were just being… themselves. Irritation began to build within me when all her comments were just disapproving the children and the parents. I finally decided to put away my book and look at the children. Sure they were loud; sure the kid cried but soon he was himself again.

Yet I realized they were spontaneous, speaking their minds, contented, and curious even with what seems to be an outing to the post office. They were alive compared to the lady beside me that could not see beyond the irritating, energy sapping children. I must have waited almost 30 minutes when my turn came. I was told my documentation was incomplete hence I could not proceed. I found myself holding my tongue. Instead of fuming at my mistake or blaming the personnel for time wasted, I became aware of how less alive I’ve become as compared to the children.

A mundane trip to the post office became a lesson about life and God calling me back to live- that was spirituality for me. A call to notice, that even in the ordinary, God is at work and continues to call us, if only we will retrain senses to notice such lessons wrapped in ordinariness!

Have you any stories or people to hold up that could help us to retrain our senses? Let’s help each other to notice the sacredness in the ordinary… that’s spirituality!