Is this too simple?

one of my recent pages from my coloring journal

I sometimes wonder if what I’m doing is too simple. Play, story, attention. It can feel small compared to everything else people are doing to help others grow spiritually. It’s quiet work. Ordinary work. The kind that doesn’t always look impressive from the outside.

But the more I sit with it, the more I come back to this: the connection between play, story, and spiritual formation is real.

Jesus taught through story. He invited people to see and notice, to imagine and wonder their way into truth. Children, in the same way, learn through play. They explore, create, and make meaning with their whole selves. And somewhere in the middle of all that, attention is being formed, not just what we see, but how we see. Imagination softens us. It opens us. It teaches us to notice what we might otherwise miss.

This isn’t stretching theology or trying to make something fit that doesn’t belong. It’s embodying something that has been true all along. When we slow down with a story, when we create with our hands, when we give our attention to what’s right in front of us, we are participating in a way of being that is deeply rooted in how we were made.

We aren’t creating something new in those moments. We’re practicing noticing what has already been there.

It can be very simple to begin.

You might open a children’s book and read it slowly, paying attention to what stands out to you. Or sit down with a coloring page or a blank piece of paper and begin to create without rushing. As you do, you could gently ask:
What is God inviting me to notice here?
or
What feels important right now?

There’s no right answer to find. Just an invitation to pay attention.

God is trustworthy. God is not hiding, waiting for us to get it right or try hard enough. Attention does not change God; it changes us. It gently forms us over time, shaping the way we see and experience the world.

And these small, quiet practices, story, play, noticing, become a way of life. They train us to recognize grace not as something distant or rare, but as something already present, already given, already here.