TODAY

Has someone ever had a knack for passing along just the right thing to you, at just the right time?

I have such a friend. She hold a very special place in my life, and has served as a great mentor for me over the last few years. She is full of wisdom, and her timing is impeccable.

For a reason that God only knows, she gets me.

This friend knows that I am going through a season of life right now that has the potential to especially “fly by.” It is a season when there is temptation to skip over, to hit the fast forward button. When I should be paying particular attention to the barrage of thoughts, commitments, assignments, and reflections, the tendency is just plow through it all under the premise of “let’s just get it done.”

What follows below is a prayer that calls this “passing through.” While the context of this prayer is perhaps more about having patience with our growth, I see it as only helpful to apply the same thought for our daily journey through life.

I want to be a better example of a life well-lived. I can’t forsake today out of the anxiousness of what is coming tomorrow. I am called to take full advantage of the opportunities in front of me today.

This draws me back to the prayer my high school football coach recited before every game. I could never find its origin; yet even 33 years later, I can still recite it by heart. It includes this phrase:

“God has given us this day to do with what we will, and what we do today is important, for we are trading one day of our life for it.”

(If you know to whom this is attributed, please share)

So, if you are reading this, you are likely in a similar season, if only because the holiday season is upon us. Amidst all of the planning, the busy-ness, the shopping mall crowds, the anticipation that is the Christmas season, may you take time to be in, and stay in……….Today

Passing on a gift that was given to me, at a time when I really needed it. I hope it brightens your day as well.

Patient Trust

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ