Day One

Life can be tempting sometimes. 

It's so easy to just turn away and say, "Nah, I'll get to that tomorrow."

And it's things like that, which result in me sitting here in the morning, trying to get this blog post written. And every time I'm thinking, "Geez, Thomas, why didn't you start this earlier?"

And I protest because I don't even know what to write about! At this very moment, I have about no clue where I'm going with this post.  Maybe I should actually get a plan together, maybe I should actually be responsible and write with purpose. 

Because in life, we're often fed a great lie. It's a lie that says: We've got time tomorrow. We've got time to write this blog post before Sunday, we've got time to prepare for that recital, we've got plenty of time to change our lives. 

The fact of the matter is we do have time, but we might not have it tomorrow. If you live each day like it's your last, well, one of these times you're going to be right.

 

I find myself always hoping to simplify my life, to pray more, to write more. But it's just too late to try right now. I know I have to change sometime, but I'm sure that everything will just fall into place.

I reasoned, if any good we do is achieved solely by the grace of God, what part do I play in it? If prayer was uncomfortable or difficult, then I must be doing something wrong. I thought grace was supposed to carry me completely in this journey. I used to think that way, but I'm starting to realize more and more, that's not how it works. After all, I would struggle with even the smallest acts of prayer. 

But the race to heaven, to perfection, is not a sprint. It's the longest marathon we will ever experience. If I live till I'm exactly 100-years-old, that means I've still got 85 years left to struggle through. The problem is that we can look at holy people around us, true paradigms of Christian living, or the lives of martyrs and saints and be tempted to just give up. 

 

But if life is a journey, then we need to train for it. We shouldn't expect to go sprinting for miles at our first try. Your body couldn't handle it and if we treat prayer the same way, then we shouldn't be surprised at our failures.  

If you're anything like me, we need a schedule, a gameplan. We need to strategize, to problem-solve. If that means starting small, then it means starting small. The key word here is start. We can't just improvise through our spiritual lives, doing what we can and failing at what we can't. This is our eternal destiny, blame whoever you want, but in the end, the choice was yours. We need to take this seriously. And pushing it off till tomorrow won't help. 

 

Wishing for tomorrow means you've written off today. You've got to make use of the opportunities that you have today. If you don't use it, then you lose it. If you say you don't have any time, then you need to figure out your priorities. Whatever it is, what's most important is to take the first step. That could simply be praying for God to show you the way! 

It might be hard, or it might be easier than you thought. Failure is only another chance to start again. After all, what have we to lose?

 

Pretty much everything, I'd say.

So let's make today, day one.