I recently sat with someone who doesn’t believe in God. What he does believe in is the ache inside him, the heaviness of not knowing what to do with the heaviness of the world. He seemed paralyzed, like he was in a fog with no map, no compass, and no voice to guide him.
And honestly, who hasn’t felt that way at some point.
As he spoke, I could hear beneath his words a longing he didn’t quite recognize: a desire for meaning, for direction, for something—or Someone—greater than himself. He kept saying, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to start.”
So I offered him something simple, something human, something true:
Just do the next right thing in front of you.
Not the next big thing. Not the next perfect thing. Just the next right thing.
And then I invited him to slow down. To listen to his own heart. To be still long enough to notice the quiet pull inside him. Because even if he doesn’t yet name it as God, something is drawing him. Something is stirring. Something is awakening.
As I reflect on this conversation, I’m singing the psalm that has been echoing in my own prayer lately:
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and bless His holy name.”
It’s a psalm of remembering—remembering that we are not alone, that we are held, that there is a Source of goodness who breathes meaning into our days. Even those who don’t believe can feel the resonance of that truth: the soul knows when it is being called home.
I didn’t try to convince him of anything. I simply reminded him that the heart is wiser than we think. That stillness is not empty, it’s spacious and that the longing he feels is an invitation.
Maybe that’s where faith begins for all of us:
not with certainty,
not with answers,
but with a quiet willingness to take one small step toward the light.
To bless the Lord with our soul—even if we’re not sure how.
To trust the tug inside us—even if we can’t name it yet.
To believe that the next right thing, done with honesty, might just lead us to the One who has been calling us all along.
Bless the Lord my soul.
Smitten With Goodness 