The Light We Almost Miss
On focus, fatigue, and the light that flickers still.
I’ve been struggling to pay attention.
It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I can’t seem to stay with anything for very long. I skim-read words I once would have savoured. I start tasks with good intentions, then find myself drifting – clicking between tabs, scrolling through feeds, picking up my phone to check something and forgetting what it was the moment it unlocks.
I tell myself I’m just tired. But it’s deeper than that. It feels like something has splintered in the way I pay attention – as though my mind has started to mirror the world around me: loud, flashing, constantly shifting, hungry for the next small hit of something.
We call it “distraction,” but that word feels too soft for what’s really happening. This isn’t just a wandering mind. It’s a battle for attention.
The Battle For Attention
Every notification, every headline, every flash of light outside the window, is a small tug on the threads that hold us together. The modern world has learned that attention is currency – and it’s competing for every coin we have.
And I feel it.
It’s strange, isn’t it – how we crave something real but keep reaching for replicas?
The dopamine hit of a notification; the brief sparkle of a like or comment; the endless carousel of adverts showing us everything we didn’t know we needed. It’s addictive because it’s designed to be. And somewhere in the process, our attention – that deep, inner capacity to notice – becomes thinned.
A Tired Mind In A Bright World
I’ve noticed that the more tired I am, the brighter the world seems to get. Not the real world – the digital one. The lights of my phone, the glow of my laptop, the early Christmas adverts bursting across every platform. They shout, look here, stay here, keep watching.
Even the physical world joins in – streets already lined with fairy lights, shop windows shimmering with the promise of joy if you just buy the right thing.
And I love fairy lights. I really do. They make dark evenings feel softer, warmer. They remind me of home and comfort. But there’s a different kind of light I keep forgetting to notice – one that doesn’t compete for my attention, but quietly waits for it.
The kind of light you almost miss.
Advent Before Advent
It’s not even December, but already the air feels charged with expectation. Fireworks echo in the distance. Supermarkets hum with Christmas songs. The adverts are choreographed to tug heartstrings.
And yet, somewhere behind the noise, Advent is waiting.
That small, slow, quiet stretch of time between the chaos of now and the quiet miracle of Christmas. A season that doesn’t demand anything shiny or loud – just space. Waiting. Attention.
But who has space anymore?
Our minds are full, our calendars crowded, our feeds endless. Even faith can become one more thing to scroll through, one more notification to open and close. I wonder if Advent, this year, might be calling us back – not to more light, but to less. To the dim, flickering kind that doesn’t impress anyone but somehow steadies the soul.
The First Christmas
The first Christmas wasn’t floodlit. It wasn’t broadcast live or shared on a story. It was candlelight and starlight and don’t forget the noises of animals. The kind of scene that would barely catch your eye if you walked past it. The kind of moment that could only be found by those who were paying attention.
Shepherds who looked up instead of down. Magi who followed a single light through the dark. A young woman who said yes to the impossible. Each of them noticed what others might have missed.
That’s the tension I keep feeling – between the bright lights of the world and the softer, subtler glow of something more special, more real, more holy. One which overwhelms; the other which invites.
It’s no wonder we’re exhausted. We’re living under floodlights when our souls were made for candlelight.
The Slow Light
There’s a different kind of brightness to Advent. It’s not dazzling or dramatic. It’s the kind that grows slowly, candle by candle, week by week.
I sometimes think that’s how God still works – not through the sudden spotlight, but through the slow accumulation of small light: a conversation that stirs something; a walk where peace returns; a verse or phrase that lingers long after the page is turned.
It’s the light that flickers, not the one that blinds.
But it’s hard to notice when we’re overstimulated. Hard to notice when there’s so much light pollution. Harder still when we’re tired or low. And yet, the miracle is that even when our attention falters, the light doesn’t.
It keeps flickering – patient, gentle, waiting to be seen.
The Digital Star
Sometimes I catch my reflection in the dark screen of my phone – the faint outline of my face framed by unread notifications – and I wonder if this has become our modern sky: full of tiny lights, none of which lead anywhere.
The shepherds looked up and saw a star. We look down and see a screen.
And I don’t say that to shame myself or anyone else. It’s just the truth of our time. We’re searching for connection in places that promise it but rarely deliver it. We crave wonder, but we settle for stimulation.
Still, I believe grace meets us here too – in the midst of it all. God doesn’t wait for us to delete our apps before drawing near. He meets us right where we are – distracted, tired, and half-present – and whispers:
Look up.
The Attention Of Love
To love someone is to pay attention to them.
That’s what I keep coming back to. In the end, our attention reveals what we worship.
Advent invites us to re-learn attention as an act of love – to turn our gaze from the floodlights to the flicker, from what demands us to what delights us.
The light of Christ doesn’t compete. It doesn’t shout. It shines where we least expect it – in the manger, in the margins, in the moment we almost scroll past.
A Small Experiment
So maybe, in these final days before Advent begins, we could each try a small, countercultural practice:
Close the laptop a little earlier.
Leave the phone in another room for an evening.
Stand outside and watch the real lights – the ones no algorithm can control.
Notice how the air feels against your skin.
Notice how quiet sounds when you give it space.
You might find, like me, that silence isn’t empty after all. It’s full of presence.
The Light We Almost Miss
There’s a dirty, candlelit stable somewhere in this season – hidden behind the bright shop windows and Christmas playlists. You might have to squint to see it. You might have to slow down.
But that’s where the real light lives. Not in the spectacle, but in the stillness. Not in the noise, but in the nearness.
It’s the light we almost miss – unless we’re looking differently.
And maybe that’s what this whole season is really about: learning to notice again.
Towards A Curious Christmas
As the nights draw in and the world grows louder, A Curious Follower will be slowing down for a few weeks – into something I’m calling A Curious Christmas.
A series of short reflections to help us pause, breathe, and pay attention to the light that still flickers – in our homes, our hearts, our world.
Before the rush begins, I hope you’ll join me there – not to escape the brightness, but to find beauty in the gentle glow that remains.
Because even now, even here, the light still flickers. And it’s calling you.
Josh | A Curious Follower
Before You Go
If you’ve connected with this reflection, you might also appreciate my new book The Radical Recall to Rest – a quiet invitation to slow down, remember who you are, and rediscover God’s presence in the midst of a restless world. The last day to order your copy guaranteed to arrive before Christmas is Wednesday 3rd December.
If you’d like to journey with me through Advent and beyond, you can:
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Leave a comment below – I’d love to hear what this piece stirred in you
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Thank you, as always, for reading, supporting, and journeying with such attentiveness.
Here’s to the slow light that still flickers.
Thanks Josh (btw the book arrived - thank you) I’m dipping into loads of books at the moment, journaling a Rule or Rhythm ( prefer that word) of life BUT the novel on my bedside table is ‘All the light we cannot see’ by Anthony Doerr. It was the title that caught my eye in a second hand book stall. I had no idea what the story was about ( but it’s good so far) - anyway, Happy Advent !