TIME

Fr Jim Cogley

Once while attending a training workshop we were were invited to take part in was had the potential to be a life-changing exercise. It took the form of a meditation where we were asked to imagine ourselves at the end of our life journey, and with just hours left to live, we were engaging in a life-review. As we looked back over our one precious life the big question would be how would we like to have lived, and what would we be most pleased to be looking at? Key questions would be, how would I like to have been in relation to others and at that point would resentments not be revealed as a total waste of time. To what extent did I develop my potential as a person or did I always play it safe and exercise more fear than faith? How did I share my resources and talents or was my life all about me? Whether I had been a faithful steward would be my own judgment of myself. At the end of the exercise we were invited to give thanks that we still had time to make the necessary changes to make the vision of what we would be looking at one day become a reality.

In the words of Shakespeare, ‘Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore so do our minutes hasten to their end.’ So how do we best make use of the time that is at our disposal be it long or short? Two of the great time wasters are yesterday and tomorrow and often we live in both. The mistakes and regrets of yesterday, with wrong choices and missed opportunities, can weigh heavily and reduce our lives to an existence. ‘If onlys’, not only cause us to miss the present, but they also deny us hope for the future. More than that, they even cut us off from the experience of Divine Providence that is only available to us when we live in the present. It may take humility to forgive ourselves for the past, plus a lot of discipline to live the NOW, but it is the only place where as the word suggests, there are No Opportunities Wasted.