Sometimes we speed up so much that God, like a good driver’s ed teacher, has to step on the brake for us.

And it only takes Him braking once for us to stop our mind, review our ambiguous intentions, all our plans and objectives. And the fact is that He is an expert at folding our calendar in half from time to time, ripping some of the pages from our agenda, and reminding us that we’re only passing through.   

We think that since we pray from time to time, everything is under His control; but only a slap on the back with His firm hand makes the cards fall from our hands, and we have to begin again. 

All our goals, including the most spiritual, depend on an essential factor that belongs only to the Lord, the time factor. This is the thing we never have because when we believe we have attained control, it escapes again from our hands.

It’s not that God is like the croupier who wipes away all the chips from the roulette with his rake and says, “The game’s over, folks.”  No, God is like the circuit breaker that blows the fuse, and the whole casino gets dark. 

And finally and foremost, what does so much effort get us?  Experience has shown some of us that the more you try to struggle to attain something, the less you reach it; and when you rest and don’t struggle with so much effort, your dream becomes reality.  

Why so much hard work to get a bigger car, a more modern television, or a country house? Our eyes are so deluged from advertisements and consumerism that we hardly see the real needs of our brother. And we go up and down the aisles of the giant department stores like zombies looking for the best price-quality deal.

But what do price and quality have to do with time? Quality things last longer, the cheaper ones less; but time absorbs them at the same time in an instant when your heart stops without previous notice, a car wipes you out at a crosswalk, or a screeching halt leaves you in a wheel chair.

And if we were to go away right now, knowing that the bonfire of our just God would burn up so many stupid things to which we are attached. I repeat, if we were to go away right now…, how many things would shine in the embers as good fruit, valiant actions alive with praise to the One who gave everything for us?

For a moment, take off that little god that we all wear on our wrist, and that makes us believe that we control our days, and meditate a little as you place it on top of your Bible, open if possible to Psalm 31:14-15:

“Desperate, I throw myself on you:

you are my God!

Hour by hour I place my days in your hands,

Safe from the hands out to get me.” (The Message)

“My times are in thy hand.” (King James, 1611)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 14:20 and is filed under faith issues / cuestión de fe.