The Time To Begin Is Today
“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
We have just finished five days of festival. For many, it may have felt more like weeks, months, or years. Work on the festival is always very intense and takes a lot of dedicated people. We, generally, have over five hundred volunteers that help to put our annual festival on. It is a great example of people working together. However, our festival is more than five days.
The five days of festival is merely the “finished product” of a year’s worth of work. On the third day of the festival, our festival chairperson came up to me and we began talking about next year. This is the year for us to sign a new contract with the festival company. We generally sign five year contracts with them. Our chairperson was telling me that, once we had our contract signed, he wanted to begin working on the permits for next year as soon as this year’s festival is complete.
That’s right. The grounds will not even be completely cleared yet and, already, plans will be underway for next year. Because, what is not started today is never finished tomorrow (or next year). This is not only true of our annual festival, it is true of our faith lives as well. How many times have people said, “I wish I had a better prayer life?” If I had a nickle for every time I heard that, we could quit taking up collections in church.
Yet, wishing does not get us anywhere. If we want a better prayer life, we have to apply ourselves to praying more each day as well as praying in different ways (meditation, scriptural reading, Biblical reading, contemplation, et cetera.) If we want a fuller spiritual life, we have to begin to live our faith at a deeper level. That might mean volunteering somewhere to help others, becoming a catechist, becoming a Minister of Care to the sick or shut in and the like.
We will not “be there” next week, next month, or next year if we do not begin this very day.
FAITH ACTION: If you have delayed doing something in your spiritual life, make an attempt to start it today.