Several years ago, a photo taken by Eric Smith, went viral. He took six shots showing a female humpback and her calf, surfacing two feet away, but a man was glued to his phone in every single shot even when three other people on his boat were all excitedly looking right at it.
He later captioned the shot with the following words, “A sign of the times. Hey dude! Stop texting! There’s an enormous humpback whale two feet from your boat!”
Smith continues, “The commentary is about us, not the actions of a specific person who just happened to get into the background of a whale photograph. This shot is simply a metaphor for many of us who use smartphones. The message is simple: It is amazing to have the world at your finger tips, but let’s not miss the extraordinary world right in front of us”. Truer words were never spoken!
I would go further and say this is an apt metaphor for our busy lives. Where we’re too busy to stop and practice what Charles Stone describes as the ‘art of holy noticing’, a spiritual discipline that ‘involves noticing with a holy purpose. We don’t notice just to notice. We don’t notice just to benefit ourselves. We notice, however, with God’s purposes and perspectives in mind. What we notice first and foremost is God Himself. That involves noticing His handiwork, what’s happening in our relationships, and our inner world of thoughts and feelings”.
God notices everything about us. In his ‘Sermon on the Mount’, Jesus directs our attention to birds and flowers, . In Proverbs 6:6, it is ants. The phrase, ‘he who has ears to hear, let him hear’, is a challenge to us to listen carefully and pay close attention to. ‘Holy Noticing is a way to bring intentional awareness in the present moment to what and who is around us and what we’re doing, thinking, and feeling – all from God’s perspective”.
Hopefully, you’ve done some ‘holy noticing’ these past weeks in preparation for our annual ‘Thanksgiving Service’ and come ready to share with one another what it is you have noticed that you are grateful for.
Christ in us, the hope of glory!
Mark
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