Living in the moment
Adapted from a sermon by Fr Anthony Messeh
Everyone has aspirations and goals in life. You may want your marriage to be stronger. You may want your careers to reach higher. You may want your friendships to be deeper. No matter what your aspirations may be, you will not achieve these goals by accident.
You can get into a car and drive to the beach, drive around America or drive to a park. However, you do not get there by accident. You must physically follow navigations to get to your destination. This is a metaphor for life. Goals are not achieved by accident. Goals require blood, sweat and tears.
A new bank opens up in town and every Monday morning they give away $10 000. You can use this money in whatever way you like but there is one rule. You must spend all the money by the following Monday otherwise you will lose it. How would you feel living next to this bank? This bank could change your life forever. Only a fool would let an opportunity like this pass by. Well, every week God gives you 10 000 minutes. This is the currency which can change your life forever. You can buy a new career, a new relationship or a new marriage. You can use those minutes in whatever way you desire. However, at the end of the week, those minutes are gone and you cannot get them back. You choose how you want to spend those minutes. You can invest in your relationships, in your spiritual life or in whatever you choose. We need to make the best of those minutes otherwise we will look back on 2017 and wonder where it all went.
There are three turning points that help us make the best of 2017. There are three ways to approach the year. Three ways to take our minutes and use them in the way God intends them to be.
1. Turn “when” into “now.” The words you say and the thoughts you think will always change your life. When (this) happens, I will (do this). “When” never happens. Stop saying “when” and start saying “now.” Are you waiting for everything to fall into place before you act, well, life will never fall into place. You need to change “when” into “now.” Do things now because your minutes will disappear at the end of each week.
2. Turn intentions into actions. Everyone has something in life that they aspire towards. You may want to exercise more. You may want to apologize more. To him who knows well but does not do it, to him it is a sin. Turn intentions to actions today. There is something called the law of diminishing intention. The law states that if I really want to do something, and I leave it to the next day, the intention diminishes. Anyone can set goals but the difficult thing is setting it to actions.
3. Turn my whole heart to Jesus in 2017. Most people want to fast forward this point, but it is actually the most important. Imagine a guy who meets the woman of his dreams. They have the happiest honeymoon ever but after all this ends, they are caught up with the busyness of life and they go a day without meeting or speaking to each other. What kind of marriage relationship is this? Well, do you love Jesus? What kind of relationship do you have if you are not going to speak to Jesus on a daily basis?
As we live in 2017, the above three turning points will help us make the best of the minutes of the year. Where there is no vision, marriages, friendships and purpose of life perish. We have control over our goals and how we use our minutes.
