The Moment Called "NOW"

Sometimes, we go out looking for lives to touch, people to help, and we find ourselves in Homes, volunteering and helping the marginalised and the least in our society, etc. This is a very good act of love if and only if we have done well our other duties that God has entrusted to us in our families, circles of friends, parish and jobs, in order of priority. It serves only our egotism if we look for other avenues to "serve" while we have not fully served in the opportunities God has given to us. We will only be tailor-making our challenges and sacrifices rather than accepting the Will of God for us. 


Is it easier to go to an old folks home to clean the ceiling fans and wheel the elderly from their rooms to the dining hall or to initiate a reconciliation with someone whom we have fallen out with? Yet, which is the act that requires far greater love than the other? Which is more immediate to our personal life? Which is God calling us to do first?


The moment called "Now" is the only moment in which we can prove our love for God. It is in this moment that we experience first-hand the hurts, disappointments and difficulties of life & it is also only in this moment that we can choose how we want to respond to these. Once this moment passes, there will be nothing we can do about an opportunity lost in offering an encouragement, a complaint uttered, a judgement passed, a swear word cursed, an unkind word sprouted, etc. All these that pass can only be left to the Divine Mercy of God. 


It is in this moment called "Now" when we most feel like pressing and holding on to the car horn that we can choose to love God and accept an inconsiderate driver patiently, when we most feel like telling a friend about how angry we are because someone did us wrong that we can choose to love God and accept the wrong done to us lovingly and mercifully. It is in these "Now" moments that we can recognise God in all these situations, trusting in His Divine Plan for us and accepting them as His Will for us, moments for us to learn to love Him in our obedience to His Holy Will. Did He not allow all these events to occur in our lives? Fulton Sheen, in "From the Angel's Blackboard", wisely points out "Because God's ways are not our ways ... because divine wisdom can draw good out of evil - the human mind must develop acceptance of the Now, no matter how hard it may be for us to understand its freight of pain." 


If we trust completely in God's Providence and that He knows best and gives us what is good for us, then let our faith in Him draw us deeper into an acceptance and submission to His Holy Will, using every "now" moments, no matter how painful and seemingly beyond us they are, to renew repeatedly our love for God and our desire to love Him even more deeply with each passing moment. We pray that God will bless us with the strength we each need to submit to His will with humility, devotion and faith. 


28 December 2010, Tuesday
10.14pm