Have you ever been driving along on a trip or maybe even across town and suddenly realize you don't remember where you've been for the last ten minutes or so? I know I have. Years ago when I worked for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), I visited companies across the country to help them evaluate and improve their safety and health programs. One of the intractable problems across industries was what they identified as workers being on "automatic pilot," going through the motions but not paying attention to what was going on around them.

Being asleep at the switch is a common malady in our culture, as well as for the Ephesians in today's Epistle lesson. We frequently focus our attention on what has happened in the past or what could happen in the future. If that is where we are in this Lenten season, it is time to heed the apostle Paul's call to wake up to what is going on in our lives right now, in the present moment, where God is always present. As Carl Jung testified when he had carved over his door in Zurich, "Bidden or not bidden, God is present." Do you have eyes to see, ears to hear this Divine Presence?

Our brain's mechanism for filtering out what it perceives as extraneous information and focusing our attention on what we think is important is what science calls our Reticulating Activation System (RAS). It seems for most of us our brains' filters need recalibrating in order for us to recognize God calling us by name to wake up, to be alert, to pay attention to all the ways the Holy One is at work in the world around us.