Is your life working?
Is your life working? Any time I asked myself the question, I usually get the answer, yeah, well, I was working to some extent. There were aspects of my life that are really working well. There are aspects of my life that need a bit of work on. And as I dig into that, is that delve into what's not working and why isn't it working?
Part of the problem is always one thing I get too busy, I agree too many things, I, I overcommit, I rush around, you know, and I'm busy, as busy as dangerous. This is not your friend, busy is not my friend. You know, we get busy, really busy.
How lives tend to start to fall apart in different ways, our lives start to show the the cracks, the stress fractures pretty quickly. The scriptures say, you know, you should judge a tree. By its fruit. Judge a tree by its fruit, you know, if. If busy was a tree, what would the fruits ? Of that tribe.
I don't know about you, but for me, the fruits of busi are overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, tired, burnt out. Discouraged. And I think in a big way, because makes us feel inadequate. He makes us feel like you're not enough, you know, you're not doing enough and you're not enough.
So if if Busi was a tree and we're going to judge busy by its fruits. I don't think busi a very good tree. Let me ask you another thing. You know, if he was a friend, how much time would you spend with busy you know, if you spend a day with the person and at the end of the day, you felt overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, burnt out, inadequate, these sorts of things, you wouldn't say to yourself, wow, that was a great day. Let's do this all over again.
Hey, busy. You want to spend the day together again tomorrow and then we do it again the day after that. And I don't think so. If Busi was a person, you wouldn't spend very much time with Busi, why ? Because Pizzi is not your friend. How do we know ? Because your best friends help you become the best version of yourself. Your best friends help you become a better version of yourself every day.
It's a busy is not our friend, and so if we are going to see the amazing possibilities that God wants to reveal to us, if we are going to thrive physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, we need to slow down. I need to slow down. It's one of the great lessons I've learned this year. One of the great lessons the pandemic has taught me. I need to slow down. It doesn't mean I can't do a lot of great things.
But sometimes I'm just rushing to do things and the thing is, is that when you rush around in the dark, you always fall over. And whether we're aware of it or not. We're rushing around in the dark. Most of the things that are happening within us, within other people around us, we're not even aware of, we're rushing around in the dark.
And so if we want to discover the amazing possibilities that God has for us, the first thing we need to do is slow down. And the best way to do that is to create a daily habit of prayer. And reflection is the hardest habit in my life to keep up. I've been talking to people about it for 27 years. Some days it's easy.
Some days I yearn for it, but there are many, many days when it is not easy, there are many, many days where I'm tempted to do something else rather than sit down in a quiet place with my God and spend some time in prayer and reflection when I skip it. The wheels. They fall off pretty quickly. And so now is a time for us to think about, OK? Am I committed to a daily habit of prayer and reflection?
If I've lost it, how do I get it back, if I have it? How do I make it stronger than ever before?
Matthew Kelly
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