Reading about writers is a pastime of mine. I scour the letters and memoirs of writers, combing for hints and help towards mastery of something that cannot be mastered.

In my word-wandering of late, I happened upon a beautiful poem by Thomas Hardy that I’d not read before. In “Afterwards,” an aged Hardy is assessing his life and processing what he hopes others will say about him once he is gone. It seems that Hardy wanted to be remembered as someone who noticed.

“Afterwards” by Thomas Hardy

“When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
“He was a man who used to notice such things”?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
“To him this must have been a familiar sight.”

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, “He strove that such innocent creatures should
come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.”

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at
the door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
“He was one who had an eye for such mysteries”?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
“He hears it not now, but used to notice such things?””

Learning to Notice

Hardy wanted to be known as a noticer, as one who “had an eye for such mysteries.” At the heart of all writing is noticing. We must see before we can ever hope to say.

While this is true for those aspiring to write words, it is more deeply true for those who claim the name of Christ. We, after all, have Spirit-opened eyes that ought to be wide-awake to the mysteries of God.

We won’t speak of a Christ we haven’t seen. We cannot know a Christ we haven’t taken the time to notice.

As such, I find myself wanting to repeat Hardy’s “Afterwards” with an asterisk. I want to be remembered as someone who knew Christ and noticed His nuanced work. This is nothing new; the Lord, speaking through Jeremiah, told us so himself:

“Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight,” declares the Lord (Jeremiah 9:23–24).

All believers share one great, grand, and glorious goal: to know Christ. Yet, the more we know Him, the more we become those who notice. We notice connections in His Word. We notice the uniqueness of fellow image-bearers. We notice His thumbprints all over our ordinary lives. We notice our unloveliness. We notice the knots in our lives.

Believers are noticers; yet, at an even-deeper level, believers are the noticed. We know Him because He has known us. We see the One who saw us in all our sin and sent His Son still. The God who notices the flight patterns (and falling patterns) of sparrows notices and knows His children. He has known and loved them from before the foundations of the world.

We were known before there was anything we could notice.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that believers are known noticers of God. If that’s what they say about me at the end of my life, I’ll count it as success. That’s my “Afterwards” with an asterisk.

Happy noticing, my known friends. Your God is worthy of all your awe and then some.

Now is the time for noticing.