Every morning, my elderly neighbor sits on his front porch and greets everyone who passes by. He and his little dog sit together, and with a wide smile, he waves to everyone with a friendly “Hello!” I’m one of those people who passes by and enjoys his familiar, warm greeting. I can tell he is enjoying life. One morning, I stopped to tell my neighbor how much I appreciated his kind greeting each morning.
“I cherish each minute of the day and have learned that the best moments of life are the little ones,” he told me during our chat. “I don’t know how many more porch days I have, so I make the most of them all. I just wish I had realized the importance of these porch moments my entire life. A lesson learned.”
I thought about my neighbor’s words as I continued my walk. Porch moments do matter. It seems like this year, a lesson I keep learning is that small moments— and what we label as “little things”—are actually what matters in a big way. Our fast-paced world moves at the speed of a thumb scroll, but a quiet revolution is happening. It’s not trending, and it won’t go viral, but that’s exactly the point.
Our phones ping, our watches buzz, and our tablets tempt us with endless content streams. Every notification promises us the allure of something new and important, something we can’t live without. But in our rush to catch every digital moment, we often allow the quality moments to slip through our fingers like grains of sand. How many big things have we completely missed?
There is something holy about lingering and letting a conversation unfold without checking the time. When we watch a sunset 
without reaching for our phones to capture it, we experience something deeper than words can describe. We don’t need to post about it. The awe moves us, and we are changed. It’s a holy moment when you notice the smile lines around an elderly friend’s eyes as she tells a story you’ve heard a dozen times. None of these moments need Wi-Fi.
Slowing down creates space for God to speak in gentle whispers, not grand revelations or viral moments. These messages penetrate our hearts:
This matters.
Stay here a while.
Look closer.
Listen deeper.
In these unhurried spaces, we hear the voice of wisdom. Beauty reveals itself in unexpected places, and connections deepen beyond the surface of likes and shares.
I pray that God will show us how to measure our days using eye contact instead of screen time, meaningful conversations instead of constant notifications, stories exchanged instead of posts shared.
Like my neighbor, we need some unhurried time on our porch to watch the world pass by. Life’s most beautiful moments rarely come to us as a notification. They come when we have the courage to be still, the wisdom to pay attention, and the love to give others our most precious gift: our presence.
“Be still and know that I am God.” – Psalms 46:10