Duc in Altum

I recently bought a new watch. It is not anything fancy. That really is not my style. Instead it is just a functional face watch with an hour hand and a minute hand which I purchased from a discount store. The only special feature on the watch is a small panel that displays the current date. Today I decided to set it to the right date, but I did not have the instructions. I do not think they were necessary because the watch only seems to have one way to adjust it. I ended up turning the little knob numerous times until it set the date to today's date. As I was doing this, I was struck at how fast the hands went around. I could not help thinking that my life is just like that. It really is speeding by, and the next thing I know it will all be over.

I am not that old, but fairly regularly I think about whether I have done much with my life. The answer is not one that makes me very comfortable. Instead, it really bothers me because I figure that even if I live to a ripe old age, I have wasted so much time. And it really pains me to realize what everyone knows--which is that you cannot go back and do it again. There really is only one shot, and the older I get the more I realize how much more seriously I need to take my life.

This business about being serious keeps coming to me. It is a form of the virtue of prudence in which you figure out how you are going to reach your goal. If my goal for my family and me is heaven, I need to map out, as best as I can, how we can hope to attain that beautiful and most magnificent of gifts. This requires seriousness. Not an uptight type of seriousness, but a seriousness that this is God's call to me. It is not a joke, but a real invitation that I can either plan to accept everyday with the long term plan in mind, or I can fritter away my time and painfully regret it later.

I am not sure where this thinking will lead me, but it certainly has given me food for thought and prayer. I know that I cannot remain where I am. My family depends on me to help plan for the future. I need to be more sober about my daily actions because the sum of them is what is building my life. There are just far too many habits and behaviors that are troubling to me, and I know that it is up to me to prayerfully work on those. The hands of time do not lie and they do not stop. Here is prayer that I use what time I have left much more prudently than I have the time to now.