Yesterday afternoon, I was trying to get Grace to her guitar lesson, which happens to be held at another church nearby. To avoid the pouring rain, we detoured through a long hallway connecting the sanctuary to the Parish Hall.

Big mistake.

It was a whirlwind of tables, tupperware crates, and talking on cell phones — as an army of vendors was frantically setting up for a Christmas Craft Bazaar, due to start in 90 minutes. They eyed us warily at first as we moved through, as if they wondered if we were early-birds who had somehow snuck in, two experienced craft-show-goers looking to close a few quick deals before the hapless vendors were really ready for wheeling and dealing. I tried to hold the guitar a little higher, as a token of our purposes, but it was hard to notice–maybe it was just too out of context for them to offer any helpful explanation.

It made me grateful for the relative civility and easy passage through the halls here at our own Craft Fair last month.

But I was also reminded of some of the perennial hazards of the Christmas season. Because like those vendors, at Christmas, we often end up doing so much rushing around, don’t we? Busy as we are, sometimes we become blind to the true purposes of others we encounter–that shopper in the parking lot who finds a spot in the nanosecond before we see it, that grandparent who calls to discuss “The Plan” before we’re quite ready with the details they’re seeking, the coworker who lost her mother last summer and is inconveniently needy and not-together, even though she is not talking about her grief.

It’s a sad irony that during a season in which we are called to notice one another with particular diligence and affection, we can become too busy to see one another clearly, much less warmly. The context of our own rushing can give us tunnel vision for everything and everyone else.

I hope that in the next few weeks, you’ll seek out moments where you can for slowing down and asking God who it is you need to be noticing, and where it is you need to be looking. And I hope you’ll feel the delight of being seen…and maybe even found, too.