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Paying Attention

March 11, 2024

Isaiah 65:17-25  |  John 4:43-54  |  Psalm 30:1-6, 11-13

As I attend to life’s troubles – which seem vexingly more complex with age – the Spirit whispers to slow down, be silent, pay attention. These practices are so simple that I often overlook them! Yet, as the Lord has promised, darkness will pass, and light will come. And what is to come will be so new and so different – new heavens and a new earth – that we must prepare to rejoice, delight, and be glad.  (Isaiah 65:17, 19, 21) 

Slow down. Slowing down seems impossible in a world of information overload, messages, and decisions. Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:6.) I slow down at the cusp of day and night – times of transition, first and last light (golden hour, as our family fondly calls it). Life feels luxurious at this time of day – free of obligations, free to slow down.

Be silent. Being silent requires escaping from messages, airpods, phones, screens everywhere (screens at the gas station!). Heading to the woods, the beautiful benches in St. Luke’s cemetery, or the kitchen table, we can let silence take hold. There’s a reverence in these places. Like God’s presence is intensified – so sit up and listen!

Pay attention. Paying attention comes easy now that our senses are heightened. Late winter is deceivingly muted.  Stunning patterns lie below the color and leaves that were stripped away in fall. I can’t help but be entranced by a stand of bare trees in snowy woods, or the way light plays through the window blinds. The Lenten season brings the starkest beauty of lines, shadowy colors, and geographic shapes. This beauty inspires praise: O Lord my God, I will give you thanks for ever. (Psalm 30:13)

Now the most complex problems can feel less significant, perhaps approachable. I can rejoice in the new heavens and new earth to come.

Laura Bottaro