Tag Archives: abiding

The Art of Noticing || Where God Still Speaks

The art of noticing begins in the sky, the way light still reaches for the edges of a storm, but the deeper work turns inward. It is the quiet attention we give to how our body responds before the mind even names what it feels. That is discernment. That is depth. That is where God still speaks when we finally put the distractions down.

Look Again | Abiding: Two Trees, One Field, Two Realities

I was headed to a local wildlife management area before the world fully woke up, camera bag on the seat beside me, fog still thick across the fields. That is when I noticed the trees. Two of them, standing in perfect alignment with one another, maybe twenty feet apart. The one closest to the pond’s edge was full — genuinely, quietly full. The other stood at that twenty-foot distance from the water and it showed. Same pasture. Same sky. Same drought. Twenty feet of distance from the source, and two entirely different realities. I have lived in both of those trees.

When Leaves Aren’t Enough: The Real Work of Spiritual Formation | Daily Bread

Spiritual appearance comes naturally. Showing up, saying the right things, checking the right boxes — from a distance, it all looks like faith. But Jesus wasn’t fooled by a leafy tree with nothing underneath, and He isn’t fooled by us either. In this promised deep dive from the Leaves but No Fruit post, we get honest about the gap between looking formed and actually being formed — what creates it, why it’s so easy to miss, and what real transformation actually looks like from the inside out. Spoiler: it’s slower, harder, and more honest than most of us expect.