Posts Tagged ‘7-21-2019’

Three Minutes a Day 7-21-2019

Sunday, July 21st, 2019

One night a father came to a parent-teacher conference in a
Chicago high school. During a talk with one of his son’s teachers, the
father broke down and began to cry. After he regained his composure,
the father apologized, saying, “My son no longer lives with me.” “But I
still love him, and I want to know how he’s doing in school.” The father
then told the teacher how his wife and four children left him that
afternoon. He was a building contractor and sometimes worked 16 hours
a day. Naturally, he saw a little of his family, and they slowly grew
farther and farther apart. Then the father said something sad. He said: “I
wanted to buy my wife and kids all those things I had dreamed of giving
them.” “But in the process I got so involved in working that I forgot
about what they needed most; a father who was around at nights to give
them love and support.”
This story and our gospel today illustrates the same point. We can
get so involved in what we are doing that we forget why we are doing it.
We can get so involved in living that we forget the purpose of living. We
can get so involved in pursuing the things money can buy that we forget
about the things money can’t buy. It’s this kind of mistake that Martha
made in today’s gospel. She got so involved in cooking a meal for Jesus
that she forgot why Jesus had come. He didn’t come for a free meal. He
came to be with friends. You and I live in a very fast-paced world. It’s so
easy to lose our balance. It’s so easy to lose our perspective; it’s so easy
to get our priorities mixed up. It’s so easy to lose sight of what we are
doing and why we are doing it.
During the World War II, a young soldier was stationed on the
island of Saipan in the South Pacific. He said that during this time he
and his friends used to go for swims in a secluded spot, just off the steep
cliffs of the island. It was a lovely place surrounded by rocks. When they
arrived, the water was so clear they could see fish ten feet below the
surface. After they had swam for an hour, however the water became so
clouded with sand, churned up from the bottom, that they couldn’t see a
foot below the surface. But the next day when they returned for another
swim the sand had settled. The water was crystal clear again. Our mind
is like that water. It too can get so clouded up from the turmoil of
everyday living that it’s hard for us to see clearly. We lose sight of
everything; our perspective gets clouded; our priorities get confused; our
balance gets destroyed. What we need to do when this happens is to
pause and let the murky waters of the mind become clear again.
We need to do what Mary did in today’s gospel. We need to sit at
the feet of Jesus in quiet prayer. We need to let him teach us what is
important and what is not. How do we do this? Practically, let me share
with you a simple method of prayer. Each night before falling asleep, we
take three minutes to do three things. During the first minute, we pause
and do a mental replay of our day. We pick out the day’s high point,
something we are happy about, like getting a letter from an old friend.
Then, we speak to Jesus about it very sincerely. Finally, we conclude by
giving thanks to Jesus for the letter and the friend. During the second
minute, we do a second mental replay or our day. Only this time we pick
out the low point in it, something we’re sorry about, like yelling at a
parent, a spouse, or a child. We speak to Jesus about this weakness and
ask him to forgive us and to heal us. Finally, during the third minute, we
look ahead to tomorrow, to a critical point. We think of some difficult
thing we must do, like talking to a parent, a spouse, or a child about a
problem that has arisen. We speak to Jesus about it and ask his light and
his strength in handling it. No matter how busy we are, three (3) minutes
a day can put us in touch with life and in touch with Jesus.
I close with a prayer for us busy people; Lord, Keep us from
getting so involved in life that we forget why you gave us life. Keep us
from getting so involved in living that we forget the purpose of living.
Keep us from getting so involved in pursuing the things money can buy
that we forget about the things money can’t buy.