It’s a test every time my wife comes home from having her hair cut (sorry, styled) or colored (sorry, highlighted). Whether or not I like it takes a back seat to the important thing – did I notice? I can be excused for bad taste, but not for inattention.

It works the other way, too. When I make the bed or do the dishes or perform some other household duty that is unexpected, I want it noticed, I want credit for it, I want my wife to fall down in adoration at the loving thought of it – even it if ought to be just ordinary daily decency.

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Novelist Annie Dillard puts it well: “We are here to witness and abet creation. To notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but we notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.”

Could it be that flowers need an audience to feel fulfilled in their created being? Could it be that the artist who paints away her life in obscurity is not only asking for notice for herself but also for the God who gave her creativity and wants it noticed?

Maybe we ought to be satisfied knowing that God is our pimary audience and the heavenly host joins in the applause at every effort we make to praise creation and its Creator. But maybe that is asking too little, since the Creator put it in us to desire notice.

When our children cry out from the playground swing, “Watch me, Daddy,” or “Mommy, look, Mommy,” do we think them self-centered and immature? Do we expect them to grow out of that as they grow up?

No, created in the image of God, we are noticing creatures who like to be noticed. God notices us each one and every thing. God desires to be noticed, too, even if that takes senses tuned to the spiritual.

Two things keep us from noticing things: busyness and boredom. Busyness stems from over-stimulation and overwork. No time to smell the roses, let alone notice them in bloom.

“To be bored, writes Frederick Buechner, “is to turn down cold whatever life happens to be offering you at that moment.” Nothing is worth getting excited about.

Busyness and boredom are twin sins of a single neglected mother.