Faith to Go Invites God Sightings in Ordinary Time

written by Charlette Preslar | June 10, 2025

The first thing I do every morning is throw on a pair of old sweats, lace up my sneakers, and go on a two-mile, early morning walk with my dogs and my sister. The second is drink coffee. When I arrive home from the walk with my tired and happy dogs, most often there is a cup of coffee waiting for me that I didn’t brew. My husband Tim did. On the days that he leaves the house early for work, the pot is usually set and ready to go, so all I have to do is push the start button. Tim doesn’t drink coffee. He drinks tea. But every morning, he completes this act of service and love for me.

It is my first God Sighting of the day.

If the phrase God Sighting feels unexpected to you, it comes from the Faith to Go podcast. A weekly discussion of the Gospel, Faith to Go is a ministry of The Episcopal Diocese of San Diego hosted by David Tremaine and me. Each week, we laugh and wrestle with the Gospel reading for the week ahead. We are often joined by a guest. These holy conversations have enriched my personal discipleship more than any other practice. It is the place where I learned that I have something to say about the Gospel, and more importantly, where I realized that I longed to hear what other people had to say, too. I wanted to encounter Jesus not just in church on Sunday, but in my everyday life. I wanted my understanding of scripture to be expanded through conversation and differing perspectives. That realization, which took place over several months in 2019, was profound, but it is not my favorite part of Faith to Go.

The God Sightings are.

The episodes begin the same way each week. Introductions, ministry context, and a God Sighting – a place where we have seen or felt God in the past week or so. It can be a “consolation” or a “desolation”, a time when it was easy to feel God’s presence, or a time when we felt bereft of it. Sometimes the God Sightings are big things: moments of clarity, of hope and healing, prophetic witness, and miracles. Othertimes they are small, like a perfect avocado cut open and lying on your cutting board, or my cup of coffee in the morning. Simple moments where we pause and notice God’s goodness in the world around us and in one another.

Ordinary God Sightings.

If this sounds familiar to you, it should. God Sightings are rooted in the Examen. The Examen can be found in Spiritual Exercises, written by Saint Ignatius of Loyola more than 400 years ago. Jesuits are required to complete it twice daily, at noon and at the end of the day – looking backward to notice where God’s presence was palpable in their lives. In my life, I do it at the end of the day after I have washed my face and crawled into bed.

A few deep breaths, an invitation for God to be with me, and a quick check-in.

For what moment today am I the most grateful?

What has challenged me today that I need to put down?

Where did I encounter God’s presence?

Simple and transformational, practicing the check-in daily has widened the lens through which I experience God, noticing God both within my daily life and God’s image in the faces of each person I encounter.

This past Sunday was Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. The season that follows it, “the season after Pentecost”, or Ordinary Time, will stretch all the way until Advent – almost half of the calendar year. And because my Faith to Go cohost, David, loves etymology, I know that Ordinary comes from the word ordinal, which means counted. So ordinary time isn’t just “ordinary”, it is a season where we pause to count our days. Or we pause to make our days count. Blending these two ideas – noticing God and making our days count, we invite you to an Ordinary Time practice. We are calling it Ordinary God Sightings, a simple check-in at the end of the day to look backward and notice where God’s presence was within it.

And because this is the Year of Discipleship in our diocese, there are resources to share. 

  • Download and print a simple Ordinary God Sighting Examen for yourself or to share with friends. Ordinary God Sightings is formatted to be postcard size, but could be adapted into other formats.
  • Listen to Faith to Go each week both to reflect on the Gospel and to listen to the God Sighting. Most of them won’t be big, shiny miracles, but a simple noticing of God in our everyday lives.
  • Use Social Media for discipleship. Each Sunday, Faith to Go will post a prompt inviting you to share your God Sightings from the week. Leave a comment with your God Sighting, or post your own video reflection and tag @FaithtoGo so that we can reshare it and broaden the conversation.
  • Share your Ordinary God Sighting with the diocese. Use this simple form to send in a God Sighting that we can share on social media, diocesan communications, and possibly on Faith to Go.

I wonder how our relationship with God and one another might be changed by this simple practice. This moment where we pause, notice God, make our days count, and ask

For what moment each day am I the most grateful?

What moments challenged me that I need to put down or give to God?

Where did I encounter God’s presence?

I wonder how our Ordinary God Sightings could change the Church, could change the world.