Distracted by Grace

Sometimes you're not distracted from God. You're distracted toward him.

“God spoke today in flowers, and I, who was waiting on words, almost missed the conversation.”

Ingrid Goff-Maidoff

I spent most of today chasing my own ideas. It was my day off and I spent it reading, thinking, writing, creating a few geeky things with AI, following threads, seeing where things led.

Good energy, but honestly, not a lot of intentional listening. Mostly just me in my own head following sparks of curiosity.

A few minutes ago, I realised it was 5pm and the day was almost over. As I looked back on it I felt a few pangs of regret and guilt. I hadn’t been very productive. I hadn’t been particularly prayerful. I began to wonder if perhaps it was a day wasted.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage the day, I opened my email and there at the top of my list of unread messages was an email from a pastor I’d never met, somewhere on the other side of the world.

He’d stumbled across my AI for Ministry writing and it had encouraged him to keep exploring what technology could do for his church. He wanted to say thank you.

And it struck me: perhaps God is present even in the distracted, curious days like this one.

Most nights, I do my own version of the Examen of St Ignatius. Among the questions I ask myself are two simple ones:

• What did I do today that energised me? What sparked joy in me?

• What did I do today that energised others? What sparked joy in others?

What I keep finding is that the intersection of those two things is often exactly where God has been at work. The days when both circles overlap are rarely the days I’d call productive by any normal measure. But they tend to be the most fruitful. Something gets brought to life in those moments that no amount of being ‘on task’ seems to produce.

Today was one of those days. I just needed an email from a stranger to help me see it.

The flower was there. I almost walked past it.