Morning Prayer: Always you are there to help me - I thihnk of you, O Lord
So says the responsory this morning, but there is an uncomfortable truth embedded inside it: most people don’t think of God in critical moments. Not because they’re bad or faithless, but because human cognition, trauma, culture, and spiritual formation all pull the mind away from the very help that is present. In short, p eople don’t turn to God in critical moments because stress narrows attention, modern life trains us toward sel f‑reliance, and many have never practiced noticing God’s presence. We change that by building habits of recollection, teaching a theology of presence rather than performance, and creating communities where turning to God is modeled, normalized, and embodied. Why people don’t think of God in critical moments 1. Stress collapses the field of awareness Under threat, the brain’s attentional system narrows to immediate survival tasks. This is not a moral failure — it’s physiology. Unless someone has practiced “God-awareness” under normal conditions, it won’t app...