My friend emailed me a car ad last week.

It was a 15 year old Chevy, it looked to be in good shape, although it had high mileage

"This is an incredible deal," he said, "I'm going to buy this car, turn it around, and sell it for twice as much!"

My friend makes his living combing advertisements online looking for cars to buy. All day long he searches for used cars, domestic, foreign, sports cars, sport utility vehicles, you name it, he knows it. He's been buying and selling cars like this for decades. So when this particular car popped up, he recognized it as a bargain right away.

This Sunday marks 40 days since Christmas, which, in Jesus day, meant his mother and father would go to the temple to present their baby to the priests and make an offering.

And in the course of doing so, they encountered two lesser known Bible characters named Anna and Simeon. These two are devout people who have spent years of their lives, day and night praying and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Messiah. 

When they saw the infant these two instantly recognized who Jesus was. And, to the surprise of his parents, let them know that he was destined to be a very special person.

Why where Anna and Simeon the only ones to see this about Jesus? What gave them special insight into the divine? Why were they alone able to see the truth when no one else could?

I like to think that their regular practices of prayer and Godly attention played no small role here. I like to think that their insight was not unrelated to the kind of mindset, priorities, and practices they cultivated.

When we make prayer and Godly attention a bigger part of our lives, we, too, are more perceptive of divine things and the regular workings of the Holy.

As you and I go through our work days, amidst the thousands of things vying for our attention, we pray for God's power to help us make prayer and godly attention bigger parts of our lives, that we too may be more perceptive to what's really going on.