Today is the feast of John of the Cross, a spaniard, a reformer, a priest, a holy soul constantly seeking to draw closer to God through detachment.
Here are a few of his words of wisdom, ""With what procrastinations do you wait, since from this very moment you can love God in your heart?"
Here is a little story for your enjoyment
One day a young man moved into a cave to study with a wiseman. He hoped to learn everything there was to know. After giving his student a stack of books, the wise man sprinkled itching powder on his student's hand and left. Every morning the wise man returned to the cave to monitor his student's progress. "Have you learned everything there is to know yet?" the wise man asked.
And every morning his student said, "No, I haven't." Then the wise man would sprinkle itching powder on the student's hand and leave. This was repeated for months. But one day, as the wise man entered the cave the student took the bag of itching powder and tossed it into the fire.
"Congratulations!" said the wise man. "You've graduated. You've learned you don' t have to know everything to do something positive. And you've learned how to take control over your life and stop the itching."
Procrastination is all around us.
We even have habits we do to encourage procrastination rather then effect a change in our lives. Here are just a few: avoidance, distraction (we distract ourselves), trivialization (we treat what needs to be done as trivial or not as important as it really is), Humor (we laugh or make jokes about our procrastination), Denial.
Procrastination is when we replace higher priority action with lower priority tasks.
Where do you procrastinate? How do you encourage procrastination? How has procrastination effected your life style and stress level?
Hard work is usually easy work that has been set aside or pushed off until later.
Think about the priority in your relationship with God. Should this not be our top priority.
How do we act in this regard? How do we center our life around acting and not procrastinating when it comes to fulfilling the great commandment: love God with all our heart, mind, soul, strength.
How do we distract ourselves? How do we avoid? How do we trivialize our relationship with God? How often have we spoken those words, "God doesn't really care?" How often de we joke about how we could be better or we could be more loving or we could work on our relationship more?
Things to consider as we continue our journey in Advent, this season of waiting but definitely not a season to procrastinate.
Words of St James 4:13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; 14whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
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