It was a completely ordinary week. Too busy to make a grocery run, so I pulled up the app like I've done plenty of times before and started adding things to my cart. Bread, milk, bananas. Nothing complicated. A couple hours later the doorbell rings, my husband grabs the bags and walks into the kitchen, and all I see is yellow. Not seven bananas. Seven bunches. We're talking somewhere around fifty bananas sitting on our counter, and he's just looking at me like he needs an explanation I don't have.
I missed it. Somewhere between clicking and checking out, I thought I was paying attention. I assumed I knew what I was doing. But I was moving fast, half-focused, and I ended up with something completely different than what I intended.
The thing is, that doesn't just happen with groceries. We move through our days convinced we're present when, honestly, a lot of it is autopilot. We show up to conversations, to commitments, even to quiet moments with God, half-there and half-somewhere-else. Our minds are already three steps ahead before the current moment even has a chance to settle. And we don't usually notice the drift until we're standing in our kitchen surrounded by fifty bananas.
Hebrews 2:1 says, "We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away."
Drift rarely announces itself. It's not dramatic. It's quiet and incremental, and it looks a lot like rushing through a prayer instead of actually connecting, or reading a verse you've read a hundred times without really letting it in. It's being technically present while your heart is miles away.
Real attention, the kind Hebrews is talking about, is actually a form of faithfulness. It's not about chasing new revelation or doing more. It's about being honest enough to ask whether you've actually stayed with what God has already said. Have you sat with it long enough for it to mean something? Or did you skim past it and move on, the way I apparently skimmed past the difference between seven bananas and seven bunches?
So what can we do? It might look like stopping to ask... did I actually hear that? It might be putting the phone down during a conversation and choosing to stay in it. It might be going back to a verse that felt significant last week and giving it more than thirty seconds this time. None of it is dramatic. But small, sustained attention has a way of changing things over time.
We gave away a lot of bananas that week. We also laughed about it, a lot, and I'm still not entirely sure how I missed it. Sometimes the funniest, most ordinary moments end up pointing at something real. We end up somewhere different than we intended not because we didn't care, but because we weren't actually paying attention.
Maybe today is just an invitation to slow down enough to notice what's already in front of you.
Reflection Questions:
- Where in your life have you assumed you were paying attention, when you've really been drifting?
- Is there something God has already shown you that you moved past too quickly?
- What would it look like today to be fully present in just one conversation or one quiet moment?