When I was living in Nashville, I remember pulling out of the parking garage across the street from Vanderbilt Divinity School after a long day. I was exhausted and stressed, and somewhere along the way, I checked out. I kept driving, but my mind was elsewhere. Then suddenly, I snapped back to attention, looked around, and realized I had no idea where I was.
I didn’t know how long I had been driving, how I had gotten there, or which direction I needed to take to get home. For a few moments, it scared me to death. I had been driving the whole time, but I hadn’t really been present for any of it.
Maybe you’ve experienced something similar. You pull into a parking lot and realize you barely remember the drive. You walk into the kitchen and stand there, wondering why you came there in the first place. You search the house for your glasses, only to find they’re on top of your head. Our bodies can be in one place while our attention is elsewhere.
It happens in our relationships, too. Someone we love is speaking, but we’re thinking about the next thing we need to do. We see our children’s faces every day and stop noticing how beautiful they are. We can move through the life we’ve been given without truly attending to it.
And I wonder how often we do the same thing to God.
God Was Already There
In Genesis 28, Jacob is traveling from Beersheba toward Haran. When night falls, he stops wherever he happens to be. There’s no temple, sanctuary, priest, or religious ceremony. Jacob is tired, so he takes a stone, places it under his head, and lies down to sleep.
During the night, he has an extraordinary dream. He sees a stairway linking earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending. God speaks to him, renewing the promise made to Abraham and Isaac: “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.”
When Jacob wakes up, he says, “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it.”
God was there as Jacob traveled, when the sun went down, and when he lay down to sleep. Jacob simply didn’t know it. His awakening reveals a gap between God’s presence and his awareness of it. I think a similar gap often exists in our lives.
We tend to divide life into spiritual activities and everything else. We expect to encounter God through church, prayer, Scripture, and Communion. Cooking dinner, answering emails, picking up the kids, and folding laundry feel like something else. Those things are just normal life.
But Jacob’s story invites us to reconsider that distinction. God meets him in a place where he had no reason to expect a sacred encounter. Perhaps the ordinary moments of our lives hold more possibilities for encountering God than we realize. Prayer can help us become attentive to the God who is already present.
The Beauty We Stop Noticing
Living in Cocoa Beach gives me a daily reminder of how easily familiarity dulls our attention. People spend thousands of dollars to vacation here. They travel hundreds of miles, wake up early, and walk onto the beach to watch the sun rise over the Atlantic. Meanwhile, those of us who live here can drive down A1A, lost in our thoughts, barely remembering the ocean is right beside us.
After we had lived here for a few years, Emma pointed out that she had gone to the beach more often when we lived in Lakeland, about two hours away, than since we moved just three blocks from the ocean. When a visit required planning, we made the effort. Once the beach became part of our everyday surroundings, it was easier to overlook. The beauty was still there; we had stopped making time to enjoy it.
Something similar can happen in our relationship with God. We may wait for a dramatic spiritual experience while overlooking the quiet ways God meets us throughout the day. A conversation with someone we love. An unexpected kindness. A surge of compassion that prompts us to help. An uncomfortable realization that we need to apologize.
These moments are easy to miss when our attention is always moving toward the next thing. The phone comes out whenever we have thirty seconds to spare. Emails, news alerts, and unfinished tasks keep pulling at us. None of these things is inherently bad, but together they leave little room to notice the life unfolding around us.
Prayer Changes How We See
We often approach prayer hoping something will change. We pray for healing, guidance, peace, and for the people we love. We bring God our fears and the circumstances we cannot control. These prayers belong in an honest relationship with God.
But one of the most important things prayer changes is us. As we bring our lives before God, we become more aware of what is happening around and within us. Why did that conversation stay with me? Where did I experience joy? What was happening inside me when I became unusually angry? Where did I receive love, and where was I invited to give it?
After his dream, Jacob takes the stone that had been near his head, sets it up as a pillar, and pours oil over it. He names the place Bethel, meaning “house of God.” The stone and the surrounding landscape remain the same, but Jacob now recognizes the place as holy. His encounter with God has changed how he sees what was already there.
Prayer can cultivate that awareness in us. The kitchen table can become a place where we receive God’s love from someone who listens. A hospital room can become a place where we experience grace from someone who refuses to leave us alone. A difficult conversation can become an invitation to listen more carefully, and a stranger can become someone whose suffering matters to us.
Paying Attention Can Be Uncomfortable
Recognizing God in ordinary life doesn’t mean pretending everything is beautiful. Sometimes slowing down makes us aware of what we would rather avoid. We notice someone’s loneliness, our own resentment, or the way we’ve stopped listening to someone we love. We also notice suffering or injustice that our busyness has allowed us to overlook.
This matters because the God we’re learning to notice is the God Jesus reveals. Jesus moves toward people who are hurting, excluded, hungry, frightened, and forgotten. As prayer deepens our awareness of God, it should also deepen our concern for those around us. Greater attention becomes an invitation to greater love.
We might discover that someone needs our help. We might recognize a relationship in need of repair or a situation that calls for us to speak up. Sometimes the uncomfortable gift of prayer is realizing we are the ones who need to change. God’s grace meets us there, too, helping us respond with honesty and courage.
Five Minutes at the End of the Day
A simple way to begin is to practice the Daily Examen, a Christian tradition of prayerfully reviewing the day. Before bed, set aside your distractions and take five minutes to reflect on the day with God. You don’t need to reconstruct every detail or grade your spiritual performance. Begin with one question: Where did I see God today?
Think about the people you encountered, the work you did, and the moments that stayed with you. Remember what made you laugh, what made you anxious, and what stirred your compassion. Where did you receive kindness? Where might you have been invited to offer it? Bring whatever you notice into conversation with God, whether with gratitude, questions, or a request for help.
Some days, you may notice a moment of grace you almost overlooked. Other days, nothing will stand out. That’s okay. Keep showing up without forcing an experience or treating this as another task you have to get right. Over time, this practice can help you become more attentive throughout the day.
You might pair it with five minutes of honest prayer each morning. Begin the day by telling God what’s on your mind, and end it by looking back with God on what happened. Both practices make room for a deeper relationship. Both can help you receive your ordinary life with greater awareness and gratitude.
Waking Up to the Life You Have
Tomorrow may bring the same responsibilities, problems, and unfinished tasks you faced today. Yet prayer may help you move through them with a little more patience and love. You may notice the person you used to walk past, or feel grateful for something so familiar you had stopped seeing it. You may put down your phone because the person across the table needs your attention.
You don’t have to leave your ordinary life to find God. There is grace to be found in the kitchen, the office, the hospital room, and even in the conversation you almost hurried through. This week, take a few minutes to slow down and look. You may find yourself saying with Jacob, “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it.”
Continue the Journey
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