By Deacon Peggy Hahn (she/her), Director of Innovation

The car game “I Spy with My Little Eye” isn’t far off when it comes to creativity, including the practice of seeing the Creator. We can all agree, from a purely theological perspective, that God is in everything. But speaking for myself, it can feel like prying the lid off a jar with old hands to recognize the sacred in most things these days. This feels harder than it used to. I have to look closely—or sometimes look away—to remember that the God of the universe is still on the loose, making all things new.

Unless I am watching children play in the street. One of the hallmarks of summer. In those moments, the angels are singing.

Like the children, this is the summer I am longing for: one where I get to play with my friends, belly laugh, cry hard, and remember what it feels like to jump fences, climb trees, and sit outside at night under the stars. I am aching for a season that is less serious and, at the same time, less superficial.

In her book Joyful Anyway, Dr. Kate Bowler offers a lens through which to see joy. She shares lists of things to notice and reflect on. I am making a few lists of my own. Thank you, Dr. Bowler. My heart needs to rebuild its desire to create again, even as the Houston heat bears down on us with 99% humidity and no rain.

My list is titled “What You See Is What You Get.” The list is meant to remind me to listen deeply to the hearts of people who are grieving while acting normal, to make an effort to know the young person sitting alone in a crowd, and to walk by myself sometimes, staying with the noise in my own head instead of reaching for an audiobook.

I’m already noticing that my vision is improving. Maybe not fully focused as my random grief slips in on occasion, but definitely with a clearer head, or is it heart? The Apostle Paul challenges us to “open the eyes of our hearts”. It’s a lovely visual, unless your heart has been broken. It’s a day at a time. I’m glad the summer is just starting.

Here are some of the questions I am journaling:

1. When in your life have you most clearly felt “the Spirit moving,” and what made you recognize it in that moment?
2. What do you tend to notice first in a difficult situation: what’s broken, or what’s still alive?
3. If joy is something we learn to see, what practices help sharpen your vision?
4. What fears make it hardest for you to trust that “what you see is what you get”?
5. Are there people in your life who consistently notice beauty, goodness, or hope? What do they see differently?
6. What would it mean to look at yourself with “the eyes of your heart” instead of the eyes of performance, shame, or comparison?
7. Can joy coexist with grief, disappointment, or uncertainty? What have you experienced?
8. What kind of spiritual blindness do you think is most common: cynicism, distraction, pride, fear, exhaustion, something else?
9. When have you mistaken excitement, certainty, or emotion for genuine spiritual movement?
10. What does it look like to seek joy honestly rather than forcing positivity?
11. If the Spirit is always moving, what keeps us from noticing?
12. What do you think changes in a person who actively looks for signs of grace every day?
13. Are there places, people, or rhythms that make you more spiritually awake?
14. What questions do you avoid because you suspect the answers might change you?
15. What kind of person do you hope others become after being around you?
16. If joy is not merely happiness, then what is it?
17. What would it look like to become more transparent — where your inner life and outward life increasingly match?
18. How do you discern between wishful thinking and genuine hope?
19. What part of your heart feels most alive right now? What part feels asleep?
20. If you believed the Spirit was already at work in your life today, how would you move through the next 24 hours differently? Next month? year?

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.  I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.  I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength  he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.                                                             – Ephesians 1:15-23