A Simple Weekly Reflection Practice (the Examen), for Everyday Faith

Most of us move through a week without ever pausing to notice what happened in it — where God was near, what we’re grateful for, what we’re still carrying. The days blur, and the small evidences of grace slip past unremembered.

A weekly reflection — sometimes called the Examen — is simply setting aside ten quiet minutes to look back over your week and ask: where was God present, what am I grateful for, and what am I carrying into next week. That’s the whole practice. Everything else is refinement.

What is the Examen, simply?

The Examen is an old and gentle way of praying that reviews a stretch of time to notice where God was at work in it. It’s traditionally done as a review of the day, but it fits a weekly rhythm just as naturally — and for busy lives, once a week is often more sustainable than once a day.

At its heart, it’s less about analyzing your week and more about receiving it: looking back slowly, with gratitude, and letting God show you what you might have missed while you were living it. You don’t need training, a particular tradition, or the right words. You need a little quiet and a willingness to look.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” — Psalm 139:23-24 (NIV)

That prayer is a good doorway into any reflection: not self-scrutiny, but an invitation for God to search with you, gently.

Where was God present this week?

Start here, because it’s the question we most often skip. Look back over the past seven days and ask, without straining: where did I sense God near?

• A conversation that landed at exactly the right moment.
• A worry that quietly resolved before you’d even finished carrying it.
• A stranger’s kindness, a bill covered, an unexpected calm in a hard hour.
• A verse or a line from a sermon that wouldn’t leave you alone.

Some of these you noticed at the time; many you didn’t. That’s the gift of looking back — providence is often only visible in the rear-view mirror. You’re not manufacturing meaning; you’re noticing what was already there. If naming these moments comes hard at first, that’s normal. The muscle strengthens with use.

What am I grateful for?

Once you’ve noticed where God was present, gratitude tends to follow on its own. Let it. Name a few specific things — not a vague sense of “blessed,” but the actual, particular graces of the week: the meal, the phone call, the diagnosis that came back clear, the ordinary morning that was simply peaceful.

Scripture ties gratitude directly to the fabric of a life of faith:

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” — 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NIV)

Notice it says in all circumstances, not for all of them. You’re not asked to be thankful that a hard thing happened — only to keep finding, even in a hard week, the specific mercies that were still there. Gratitude and trust grow together; we explore that more in gratitude and faith.

What am I carrying into next week?

This is where reflection becomes prayer. As you review the week, some things won’t be resolved — a worry, a relationship, a decision, someone you love who’s struggling. Name them plainly, and carry them into the coming week as prayers rather than as weights.

• Name the people and situations you’re still praying about.
• Notice what feels unfinished — a question you can’t yet answer, a wait that isn’t over.
• Hand them forward. Not to file them away, but to hold them before God as you step into the next seven days.

And then — this is the quietly powerful part — when one of those carried prayers is answered, go back and mark it. A worry you named in July, marked answered in September, becomes something you can return to on a discouraging day. This is exactly why Miraculous lets you mark a carried prayer as answered so it becomes a small, permanent record of God’s faithfulness.

How the Examen pairs with Scripture

A weekly reflection deepens when you let God’s Word sit alongside it. You might open with a short passage and let it frame how you look at your week — reading Philippians 4:6-8, for instance, and then noticing where anxiety gave way to peace over the past seven days.

The two practices feed each other: Scripture shapes what you look for, and your week gives you real, lived places to see the Word at work. This is the meeting point we describe in where Scripture and your own prayers meet — and it’s the heart of how Miraculous’s weekly reflection is built, weaving real Scripture together with your own prayers and the people you’re carrying.

A simple weekly rhythm to try

You don’t need a system. Try this, once a week, wherever a quiet ten minutes fits — Sunday evening is a natural anchor for many people:

1. Settle and ask. Take a slow breath. Ask God to help you see the week clearly. Search me, O God.
2. Give thanks. Name two or three specific graces from the week.
3. Notice God’s presence. Where was He near? Where did you feel far, and why?
4. Sit with the hard parts honestly. Regret, weariness, and unanswered prayer belong here too.
5. Carry it forward. Name what you’re taking into next week, and pray over it.
6. Write a line or two. So your future, more forgetful self can look back. A prayer journal is a natural home for this.

That’s it. If you do only steps two and five, you’ll still have a practice worth keeping.

Why the looking back matters

The reason to reflect weekly is the same reason people have built stones of remembrance for thousands of years: we forget. We forget the prayers that were answered, the fears that never came to pass, the faithfulness that carried us through last winter. Left unrecorded, a whole year of grace can vanish from memory.

A weekly reflection is a small, gentle guard against that forgetting. Ten minutes, once a week, to notice where God was present, to give thanks, and to carry the rest forward. Over time it becomes something more than a habit — it becomes a record you can return to, and take heart.

Start this week: settle, give thanks, notice, and carry it forward. Keep it small, keep it honest, and let it become a quiet weekly window into how faithful God has been.