By Jillian Cooke, MTh, MAPM
Fr. Kolbe Missionary
It is all too common.
You are talking to someone and they keep looking at their phone. You are in the car with someone and they have wires dangling from their ears. You are telling a story, and the other person is staring at the TV. You are annoyed and frustrated, because you want their attention, you want to BE WITH THEM --- not a connected corpse. People of every age and generation can be so rude. Honestly, you'd like to throw their phone out the window.
Not so fast.
You may be no better. The Lord is with us 100% of the time. Chances are, we are not really WITH HIM. We are more like those "connected corpse" we so disdain. We might not have an ipod in our pocket or a iphone in our hand, but our minds and hearts are elsewhere. We give him lipservice, go through the motions (like a teen sweeping in front of the TV), but we're only there 75%, 85%, 90% of the time. Distractions abound, worries multiply, stuff gets in the way, and next thing we know, we might as well be tweeting when the Lord is talking to us.
When the Good Shepherd had 99%, he did not settle, but he went after the lost 1%. He is truly a jealous God, not out of some sort of mythical greed, but out of undying love. Out of this same love, he will pursue us, but only we can turn over our lives. Only we, by His grace and with the help of the Immaculata, can "unplug" and give him our full attention. As when a phone beeps, or blinks, or buzzes - we may have distractions or lapses of attention - but we just keep right on moving and address those things in their proper time, we will find that God really is talking to us ---- we just weren't listening.
Don't settle. Life is not just about passing, even with 99%, but about loving and living 100% of the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment