Your attention, please.That's what God wants, Leighton Ford discovered. It's the path to becoming like Christ.Distractions, fear and busyness were keeping Ford from seeing God's work in and around him. He was missing God. So he began a journey of longing and looking for God. And it started with paying attention.In these pages, he invites you to journey with him. Using the rich monastic tradition of praying the hours, Ford will walk with you, helping you pay attention to God's work in you and around you throughout each day and in different seasons of your life.If you're busy, distracted, rushing through each day, you might be feeling disconnected from God, unable to see how he's working. You might be missing him. But the way toward him starts with a pause and a prayerwith intention and attentionand becomes a way of life, awake and alive to the peaceful, powerful presence of God.

Leighton Ford is President of Leighton Ford Ministries, which seeks to help young leaders worldwide to lead more like Jesus and more to Jesus. For many years, Ford communicated Christ around the globe through speaking, writing and media outreach, addressing millions of people in thirty-seven countries on every continent. He served from 1955 until 1985 as Associate Evangelist and later Vice President of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and was featured as the alternate speaker to Billy Graham on the Hour of Decision broadcast. Ford describes his current mission to be "an artist of the soul and a friend on the journey." He served for nearly twenty years as chairman of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, an international body of Christian leaders. He chairs the Sandy Ford Fund and has served as a board member for World Vision U. S., the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He received the 1990 Two Hungers Award, recognizing his contributions to addressing the physical and spiritual hungers of people around the world. In 1985 he was selected as Clergyman of the Year by Religious Heritage of America and TIME Magazine singled him out as being "among the most influential preachers of an active gospel." The author or co-author of numerous books, includingTransforming Leadership and The Attentive Life, Ford lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife Jean.

An Introduction: Short Flights and Quick Returns
One Who Paid Attention: C. S. Lewis Looking Along a Beam
1. Paying Attention: The Hours of Our Lives
One Who Paid Attention: Simone Weil on a Postage Stamp
2. The Birthing Hour: Time Before Time
One Who Paid Attention: Vincent Donovan--the Masai Chief, the Missionary and the Lion God
3. Daybreak: The Hour of Beginnings
One Who Paid Attention: The Teacher Who Took Off His Hat
4. Prime Time: Our Root System
One Who Paid Attention: My Spiritual Director Dog
5. Active Life: A Slower Pace in a Faster World
One Who Paid Attention: Kierkegaard?s Lanterns, Fireworks and Stars
6. The Noonday Demon: Our Distractible Selves
One Who Paid Attention: How Mother Teresa Kept Going
Holy Stillness: An Interlude
7. When Shadows Come: Darkness Comes Early
One Who Paid Attention: Jerry Sittser Trying to Catch the Sun
8. Lighting the Lamps: The House with Golden Windows
One Who Paid Attention: Nouwen, a Restless Prophet
9. Grandfather Time: When Evening Comes
One Who Paid Attention: Hwee Hwee Tan, Becoming What We Look At
Epilogue: The Journey Home
Appendix: Observing the Hours
Notes
In Attention to Gratitude
Permissions