Any given day, our actions is likely to be pushed by one huge to-do checklist: decide up and drop off; get the place we have to be; see who we organized to see; work on tasks; put together and clear up; contact the individuals in our lives. We put one foot in entrance of the opposite most days with out giving a lot thought to the long run. In spite of everything, there are penalties to lacking a beat. We now have our jobs to do, individuals depend on us, and we imagine the fixed motion is just not a lot for us as it’s for them.
The hamster wheel hits pause after I study that one other cherished work colleague from years passed by has handed on. I freely indulge the reminiscences. What begins as a whisper of, “Gee, my life appears to be going by extra rapidly,” grows louder with the passing of this third former colleague this 12 months. Reflecting on every of their lives causes me to take a look at my very own. Have I completed sufficient, cherished sufficient, or stated sufficient to my household, pals, and others?
I learn the phrases of the monk and mystic Thomas Merton, who wrote:
If you wish to determine me, ask me not the place I stay, or what I wish to eat, or how I comb my hair, however ask me what I’m dwelling for, intimately, and ask me what I feel is holding me from dwelling totally for the factor I need to stay for. (What I Am Residing For, ed. Jon M. Sweeney)
His phrases give me pause. The factor we need to stay for is eternal. What retains us from dwelling totally for what we all know to be the trail to God’s glory? Our prayer reveals the response distinctive to our personal expertise.
Merton knew his personal weaknesses and wrote extensively and with humility about his internal journey. On the nook of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, not removed from the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani, he famously found a connection and solidarity with all human beings, particularly, “the belief…that they had been mine and I theirs,” as he wrote in Conjectures of a Responsible Bystander. His journey to God led him to a deeper reference to humanity.
I think about standing earlier than God with my three admired, now deceased, colleagues. The break up display of prayerfulness and actual life performs. I see the fruits of prayer alongside the magnetic pull of preoccupations, fears, and anxieties, selflessness at odds with selfishness. The distraction of what others consider us, say about us, or do to us denies the sure information that solely God’s analysis really issues.
There have been occasions when the distraction of the busyness of labor and enterprise journey led me to overlook all else. There’s not an opportunity God would ask me now about compensation, promotions, or success in enterprise. These are preoccupations in our world, not his.
What am I dwelling for? I stay for you, O Lord. How am I doing?
Time, consideration, possessions, and monetary sources are treasures which can be ours to assign. How we spend them and the way we deal with others reveal what we live for. Merton’s query jogs my memory of the passage from Matthew 6:21, “For the place your treasure is, there your coronary heart will likely be additionally.”
Lord, could I direct my coronary heart, in addition to my actions, time, and sources, to your service. In Jesus’ identify, I pray. Amen.