Part Two: Jesus and the Sacred Turn

Jesus had the most important destination of anyone who ever walked the earth. Yet he kept stopping. He kept turning his head. He kept noticing people in the blind spots.

Consider this moment: He’s on his way to Jairus’s house to heal a dying girl. A legitimate emergency. Life or death. And in the middle of the urgent crowd pressing around him, he stops.

“Who touched me?” (Luke 8:45)

His disciples are bewildered. “Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you” (Luke 8:45). Everyone is touching you! But Jesus knows the difference between accidental contact and desperate reach. A woman with a bleeding disorder, someone everyone else had walked past for twelve years, had reached out to touch his cloak.

He could have kept walking. The dying girl couldn’t wait. But he turned. He did the head check. He saw the woman everyone else missed. “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace” (Luke 8:48).

Two people healed that day. Both in blind spots. Both requiring Jesus to turn aside from his urgent path.

Or consider Zacchaeus, hanging out in that sycamore tree (Luke 19:1-10). The crowd was focused on Jesus—the road ahead, the teaching about to happen. But Jesus looked up. He saw the tax collector whom everyone had learned not to notice, the man so desperate to see Jesus that he climbed a tree.

“Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5).

The head check, again and again. The sacred practice of turning to see what others miss.

And then there’s Moses at the burning bush. He was going about his business, tending sheep, focused on the work at hand. But something caught his peripheral vision—a bush burning but not consumed. The text is specific: “I will go over and see this strange sight” (Exodus 3:3). Moses had to turn aside to see it. He had to do a head check.

And God responds: “I have indeed seen the misery of my people” (Exodus 3:7). God is the one who notices. God is the one who does the head check for all of humanity, seeing those in the blind spots of power and privilege.

I wonder sometimes if God isn’t in our blind spot too.

We spend so much time looking ahead—making plans, pursuing goals, worrying about the future. We spend time checking the rearview mirror—reviewing our past, replaying our regrets. But God is often just over our shoulder, in that place we’re not looking. In the present moment. In the person beside us. In the interruption we didn’t plan for.

One of my colleagues, another Franciscan Retreat Center Director, tells me the most important parts of his day are the interruptions; when grace seeps into the daylight in an unexpected way. Always open to the invitation. Something for all of us to work on!

What if the spiritual life is less about the road ahead and more about the continual turning of the head? What if holiness is measured not by the destinations we reach but by who we notice along the way?

Jesus teaches us this again and again. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). He’s in the blind spot. The hungry person. The stranger. The prisoner. The one we almost missed.

The apostle James warns us: “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15-16).

How many times do we pass by people’s real needs because we’re looking straight ahead? We offer prayers when presence is required. We give advice when listening is needed. We move forward when turning aside is the call.

The head check isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about having the humility to turn and look. To see. To notice. To be present.

This week, perhaps we can practice the sacred head check:

Before each transition—entering your home, starting work, beginning a meal—pause. Turn. Look around. Ask: “Who is here that I almost missed?”

Stay with that person for a few more seconds of full attention. Watch what happens.

The grocery clerk becomes Daniel, celebrating his first birthday without his father. The quiet colleague becomes someone carrying unseen grief. Your spouse becomes not a fixture in your landscape but a soul worthy of complete attention.

And perhaps, in turning to see them, you discover something else: God has been there all along, hoping you would turn your head.

“The last move is the ‘head check,’ ensuring no one is in my blind spot, that person who is in my life unnoticed, with whom I might collide, or I nearly did, but didn’t notice at the time.”

May we become people who notice. People who turn. People who see.

Copyright 2025 Michael J. Cunningham OFS

A reflection in the spirit of awakening to the spiritual path around us
Copyright © 2025 Michael J. Cunningham