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Journey and attention

Lynne Baab • Tuesday September 16 2025

I invite you to ponder this statement: “The most important judgments in life are between . . .” How would you complete that sentence? Right and wrong? Good and evil? Kind and unkind? Loving and selfish?

I found an intriguing statement about important judgments in an unexpected place: a letter to the editor in Christianity Today. The writer of the letter, Anthony Hess, was responding to an article about monasticism. He writes:

“Fundamentalism assumes that the most important judgments in life are between good and evil. Monasticism reveals that the most important decisions are between attention and distraction.” [1]

I’m not sure I would choose attention and distraction as the most important judgments we make, but let’s work with his idea for a moment. The first thought that comes to my mind is my interviews with four people who walked the Camino de Santiago, described here. They all talked about God’s provision for them on the Camino. The Camino heightened their desire to see God at work, so they paid attention to the big and small gifts of each day. Their attention enabled them to see God’s generosity to them, and they hoped to bring that perspective home with them.

Adele Ahlberg Calhoun writes that key components of a pilgrimage are “prayerful intention to be more than a tourist, as well as prayerful attention to the Holy Spirit’s movement within.” [2] Attention, then, might be directed to events that happen in the outer world or thoughts and feelings in the inner world.

Consider other trips that are not intentional pilgrimages. On a trip, maybe you’ve experienced, as I have, a heightened sense of attention as we want to take everything in. Perhaps the trip cost a lot of money, and we want to make the most of it. Perhaps the trip has that once-in-a-lifetime feel, and we want to notice everything we can. Viewing our life with God as a journey can help us understand the importance of attention. After all, today is a once-in-a-lifetime day. We will never get this day again.

I went through my collection of quotations and picked out a few that illustrate components of attention that can help us make the most of each day walking with Jesus.

1. We can serve people in our lives by noticing things about them.

Eugene Peterson, pastor and author, said this: “I think the pastor’s chief job is not to get something done but to pay attention to what’s going on, and to be able to name it, and to encourage it.” [3] I think parents function as pastors to their children, and I wish I had done what Eugene Peterson recommends more often when my kids were young. I’m trying to do that frequently with my granddaughter so she gets encouragement for big and small moments when she is kind, smart, and strong. I try to do it with family members and friends. We travel life’s road together with so many people. We can notice their gifts and contributions and let them know we see them.

2. Paying attention to what we’re feeling and thinking can help us learn to sit with our emotions and learn to grieve with Jesus.

Author Maggie Smith writes, “When something hurts, instead of distracting yourself, instead of trying to fix it or cover it up, just pay attention. Focus. Feel it. Trust that it will pass.” [4] Often, I try to fix, cover up, or ignore “negative” emotions because I don’t trust that they will eventually pass if I let myself feel them. Often, I’m not confident Jesus will comfort me in my sadness.

3. We can develop strategies and practices that help us notice.

In Placemaking and the Arts, Jennifer Allen Craft argues for an emphasis on the arts as a way to pay attention: “The arts are a form of placemaking, they place us in time, space and community in ways that encourage us to be fully and imaginatively present, continually calling us to pay attention to the world around us and inviting us to engage in responsible practices in those places.” [5]

In additional to many forms of artistic expression and appreciation, many other practices can help us pay attention to our present time and place so we can perceive God’s presence and gifts right here and now. Consider walking, gardening, cooking, and journaling.

4. We can ask for God’s help in those times when our attention gets stuck on our own needs and wants.

Religion professor Jason A. Mahn quotes Walter Brueggemann in these words from a magazine article: “Our consumerist culture has schooled us and fooled us into keeping ‘us as the agenda, an excuse for not ceding life beyond the self, an inability to transfer attention beyond our needs and appetites.’” [6] When we notice this happening, we can ask for God’s liberating power.

Immanuel, God with us, you walk with us every moment of every day. Help us perceive you, here, now, in this place and time. When our attention goes in counterproductive directions, draw our hearts to you for the strength to refocus. Help us develop strategies that enable us to pay attention to your presence in our lives. Help us notice beauty and faithfulness in others so we can encourage them. Thank you that we are never alone on the journey.

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I am thrilled to announce my latest book, now available for pre-order. Almost Peaceful: My Journey of Healing from Binge Eating will be released on October 15. If you’re interested in my story, please pre-order the book because pre-orders boost long-term sales.

Next week: Common discovery on the journey. Illustration by Dave Baab: Matukituki River Valley near Mount Aspiring, New Zealand

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[1] Anthony Hess, Letter to the Editor, Christianity Today, May/June 2025, 135.
[2] Adele Ahlberg Calhoun, Spiritual Disciplines Handbook (InterVarsity Press, 2015), 69.
[3] Eugene Peterson, in a talk at Catalyst West in 2011 about being formed as a pastor. You can listen to it here.
[4] Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal Publishers, 2020), 203.
[5] Jennifer Allen Craft, Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life (IVP Academic 2018), 42.
[6] Jason A. Mahn, “The Bible and the pandemic,” Christian Century, October 21, 2020, 31-32. (Mahn is quoting Walter Brueggemann from Virus as a Summons to Faith.)



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