Any given day, our activities might be driven by one big to-do list: pick up and drop off; get where we need to be; see who we arranged to see; work on projects; prepare and clean up; contact the people in our lives. We put one foot in front of the other most days without giving much thought to the long term. After all, there are consequences to missing a beat. We have our jobs to do, people rely on us, and we believe the constant movement is not so much for us as it is for them.
The hamster wheel hits pause when I learn that another cherished work colleague from years gone by has passed on. I freely indulge the memories. What starts as a whisper of, “Gee, my life seems to be going by more quickly,” grows louder with the passing of this third former colleague this year. Reflecting on each of their lives causes me to look at my own. Have I done enough, loved enough, or said enough to my family, friends, and others?
I read the words of the monk and mystic Thomas Merton, who wrote:
If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. (What I Am Living For, ed. Jon M. Sweeney)
His words give me pause. The thing we want to live for is everlasting. What keeps us from living fully for what we know to be the path to God’s glory? Our prayer reveals the response unique to our own experience.
Merton knew his own weaknesses and wrote extensively and with humility about his inner journey. At the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, not far from the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani, he famously discovered a connection and solidarity with all human beings, namely, “the realization…that they were mine and I theirs,” as he wrote in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. His journey to God led him to a deeper connection with humanity.
I imagine standing before God with my three admired, now deceased, colleagues. The split screen of prayerfulness and real life plays. I see the fruits of prayer alongside the magnetic pull of preoccupations, fears, and anxieties, selflessness at odds with selfishness. The distraction of what others think of us, say about us, or do to us denies the certain knowledge that only God’s evaluation truly matters.
There were times when the distraction of the busyness of work and business travel led me to forget all else. There’s not a chance God would ask me now about compensation, promotions, or success in business. These are preoccupations in our world, not his.
What am I living for? I live for you, O Lord. How am I doing?
Time, attention, possessions, and financial resources are treasures that are ours to assign. How we spend them and how we treat others reveal what we are living for. Merton’s question reminds me of the passage from Matthew 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Lord, may I direct my heart, as well as my actions, time, and resources, to your service. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.
Beautiful and very timely.