Spiritual Message from Fr David:
Thomas Edison one of the greatest inventors in history only had 3 months of formal schooling. Yet his 1,093 inventions transformed the world. He defined genius as “one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent hard work”. He worked very hard for days at a time, obsessed with his projects, stopping for only short naps as a break only when it was absolutely necessary. Failure never discouraged him. When his 10,000th experiment at the storage battery failed to produce his desired result, one of his friends tried to console him. Edison’s response was “I have not failed…I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
We put so much effort in our life to be successful in our jobs. Work hard, sacrificing comfort, pleasure, sometimes even weekends, because it will help us in the long run to push forward in our career. Some of us can also be quite admirably resilient. Do we apply such principles to our spiritual lives? What measure of spiritual success could be achieved if we worked hard in our spiritual lives?, Do we obsess over it? Do we sometimes even sacrifice our own comfort to mature in our spiritual success?
St Theophan the recluse says, sadly when it comes to our relationship with God even a few minutes in prayer may seem like hours have passed. Yet we can spend hours on Netflix or youtube and it seems as if only mere seconds have passed. Why is it that I will never skip a delicious meal to keep my stomach from starving, but I may frequently skip prayer and happily keep my spirit wanting, why is it that I can read many chapters from a big novel but I struggle to pick up the Holy Bible and read even one page. I can always get up very early to get to work on time, but I find it impossible to get up for church on Sunday.
Some people may be lucky enough to be brought up in a spiritual family, or spiritual environment…but regardless long term spiritual success is 99% hard work and effort by Gods grace. How much effort are you putting into your relationship with God? Make the decision today, that from this day forward I will choose to focus on growing my relationship with you my Lord, and I will be resilient and not allow anything to stop me from experiencing You more and more in my life each day.