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It’s been on my mind since Justin Bieber’s “Everything Hallelujah” started flooding my Instagram “suggested for you” section. If you haven’t seen this trend, I’ll summarize:

Following his record-breaking Coachella performance in April, Bieber’s song, “Everything Hallelujah,” took the Internet by storm. Post after post paired the track with photos, videos, and captions celebrating the hallelujahs of everyday life.

The lyrics are simple: take a walk, hallelujah. Sun is out, hallelujah. It's raining, hallelujah. Breathe the air, hallelujah. Everything, hallelujah.

The posts followed suit: coffee in the morning, hallelujah. An able body, hallelujah. My family, hallelujah. Food on the table, hallelujah. House full of laughter, hallelujah.

As I scrolled through these “little hallelujahs,” I felt torn. On one hand, there is something so beautiful about noticing the ordinary. But on the other, I felt some discomfort watching a sacred word recycled for attention—a word of praise absorbed by the Internet and likely to disappear in the algorithm days later.

I was tempted to post my own “everything hallelujah” (and, eventually, I did). Initially, however, I hesitated. What would that look like to others? Was I joining a movement toward genuine gratitude, or was I just participating in another trend, creating another unrealistic highlight reel of my life, chasing likes and views?

The more I thought about it, the more I was reminded of how much the phrase “everything hallelujah” so clearly echoes the language of my faith: “every square inch,” “every knee shall bow,” “every tongue confess,” "all that hath life and breath, praise the Lord." It’s the kind of language that doesn’t separate the sacred from the ordinary, the kind of language that insists all of life—the simple and profound, the joy and the grief—belongs to God.

What if we each spent a little more intentional time calling attention to the ways the world begs us to recognize His glory? How might that reorient our hearts and lives to praise? And why would I not use my own stories, however trite they may seem, to fill a corner of the earth with little praises to the Lord?

As we return to this series of “Stories That Shape Us,” I want to invite you to pay attention to the stories all around us—the books we read, the music we listen to, the movies we watch—and what they are training us to notice, to love, and to long for. In the weeks ahead, I hope you’ll find pieces that help you recognize the little hallelujahs unfolding around us, time to reflect on the way the Lord is at work in the simple and profound and a desire to respond with lives marked by attention and praise.