“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10
Those words sound beautiful when they’re printed on a coffee mug.
They’re much harder to live.
Especially when life gets noisy.
The doctor’s office calls.
The bills pile up.
Someone you love is hurting, and you don’t know how to help.
A prayer you’ve been praying for months still feels unanswered.
In those moments, faith can feel less like confidence and more like a choice.
A decision to keep believing even when you can’t see what God is doing.
That’s one reason Ross Voigt’s The Things I Think Sometimes feels different from many poetry collections. Beneath the stories about family, marriage, and memories is a recurring reminder that God often works quietly.
Not always through miracles.
Sometimes through moments.
A conversation.
A memory.
A stranger.
A child’s prayer.
The kind of things we might miss if we aren’t paying attention.
The Bus Stop That Became a Sanctuary
One of the most memorable pieces in the collection is Talking to Jesus.
The story begins in an ordinary place: a bus stop.
No church.
No sermon.
No dramatic spiritual experience.
Just two people talking while waiting for transportation.
One shares stories about work. The other listens.
The conversation feels casual.
Almost forgettable.
Until it isn’t.
By the end of the story, the reader realizes something sacred has happened.
What I love about this piece is what it suggests about faith.
God doesn’t always interrupt our lives.
Sometimes He enters them quietly.
Sometimes the holy moments arrive disguised as ordinary conversations.
And sometimes we don’t recognize them until much later.
The Prayers That Reach Heaven
Children have a way of making faith look simple.
Not simplistic.
Simple.
In The Pray, a young boy repeatedly asks God to watch over his father.
His prayers aren’t polished.
He doesn’t use impressive language.
He simply speaks from the heart.
Adults often complicate prayer.
We worry about saying the right thing.
The right words.
The right theology.
Meanwhile, a child simply says:
“God, please watch over my dad.”
And somehow that feels closer to what prayer was always supposed to be.
Honest.
Trusting.
Personal.
Perhaps that’s why Jesus spoke so often about childlike faith.
Children don’t spend much time wondering whether God is listening.
They simply assume He is.
When God Meets Us in Our Worry
Faith sounds wonderful when life is going well.
The real test comes when it isn’t.
Ross Voigt touches on this in God’s Hands.
The scene is familiar.
Bills on a desk.
Anxiety.
Uncertainty.
The feeling that there simply isn’t enough.
Most readers have experienced some version of that moment.
The details differ.
The emotions don’t.
What’s striking about the poem isn’t that the problem disappears instantly.
It’s that the perspective changes.
Instead of carrying the burden alone, the speaker chooses to place it in God’s hands.
That decision doesn’t always change circumstances overnight.
It often changes the person carrying them.
Heaven Feels Personal Here
Many books discuss Heaven as an idea.
Voigt writes about it as a destination where relationships continue.
A place where reunions happen.
Where grief finally loosens its grip.
Throughout the collection, there is a recurring hope that death is not the end of the story.
Readers who have lost parents, spouses, siblings, or friends will likely recognize that longing.
The desire to believe that goodbye is temporary.
The desire to believe we’ll see those we love again.
Faith doesn’t eliminate grief.
But it changes the shape of it.
It introduces hope into places where hope would otherwise struggle to survive.
Learning to Notice
One of the greatest spiritual challenges today isn’t disbelief.
It’s distraction.
Phones buzz.
Schedules fill.
News updates never stop.
Life becomes loud.
And when life becomes loud, it’s easy to miss what God may be doing right in front of us.
That’s what I kept returning to while reading The Things I Think Sometimes.
Not the big moments.
The small ones.
A husband appreciating his wife.
A father reflecting on his daughters.
A child praying.
A stranger offering kindness.
The collection suggests something many believers already know deep down:
God is often present in the ordinary.
Not hiding.
Waiting to be noticed.
Maybe that’s why these poems resonate with so many readers.
They remind us that faith isn’t only something practiced on Sundays.
It’s something found in kitchens.
At bus stops.
Around family tables.
In memories.
In conversations.
And in the quiet moments when we finally slow down long enough to listen.
If you’re looking for a book that explores faith through everyday experiences rather than abstract ideas, The Things I Think Sometimes offers exactly that.
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