There are times that God moves close—at the church’s altar, the stillness of prayer, in the congregation’s voice at worship. Those moments matter deeply. They sustain us.

But the mystery that lies at the centre of the Christian faith is not simply that God comes close in such moments, but that in Jesus Christ God has fully penetrated the very warp and woof of daily human life. Today, I’m quietly sharing a new collection:

Christ in the Everyday: Emmanuel Unnoticed.

This book has grown slowly, so quietly that it seemed that I’d been reading it in silence, attempting, as it would seem, to pay closer attention to where Christ might already be in existence. Not just in what we label as sacred, but in the places we walk through without thinking, in supermarket aisles, waiting rooms, chip shops, roadworks, forecourts, quiet moments of longing.

Each piece follows a simple pattern:

• a short introduction,
• a hymn text,
• a reflection,
• and a small devotional act.

They are not complicated. They are not intended to explain anything.

They are simply an invitation to notice.
To pay attention to the worker behind the counter.
To see the person counting coins.
To see the quiet act of care, that shared word, the waiting.
And maybe even noticing and starting to recognise that Christ has been there all along.

This is a book as much an outcome of limitation as an intention. A lot of it has been written in the gaps and the in-between of life—while waiting, while resting, while dealing with the nitty-gritty of chronic illness and dialysis. In that way, it is a book for those spaces too: hospital chairs, coffee tables, quiet bits of the day.

If it helps, I hope that it gently teaches the eye—the heart:

• to find grace in the ordinary,
• to honour the sanctity of everyday time,
• and to rely in trust that Christ is with us— in the regular, and every day.

The book is available now here:
Christ in the Everyday: Emmanuel Unnoticed.

Thank you, as always, for reading, for praying, for walking this path with me.
— Michael