“Your date book is your creed.  What you believe in, you have time for.”  Anonymous

The Christmas season can be a wonderful and exciting time of year with all the festive lights, decorations, music and celebrations.  Yet, many of us can get so caught up in mindlessly hurrying through each day that we forget about the real essence of the celebration: “Jesus is the Reason for the Season!”  It’s all about the birth of our Lord.  

How do we make time to create a quiet place in the cave of our soul to receive Jesus during the Nativity Fast?

During these next weeks I am asking you to pause in prayer, to pause in quiet moments with God.  Taking time out of our busy and hurried life is essential!

How do we measure time?   What do we do with time we are been given? 

I remember one of my students at SPU playing a song for a presentation from the musical ‘Rent’ entitled ‘Seasons of Love’.  I was impressed by its lyrics that challenged my thoughts about how I measure time.  It goes something like this…

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes;
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear.
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes.
How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights.  In cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In five hundred twenty-five thousand Six hundred minutes. How do you measure a year in the life of a woman or a man?

How about love? How about love?  How about love?  Measure in love, in truths that she learned, or in times that he cried. In bridges he burned, or the way that she died…”

…Or I might add, in the way that she lived.  There is a famous quote by an unknown author. “The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”  How have you been measuring time? How have you been using the heartbeats God has gifted you to LIVE your life to the fullest?   Or are you too busy to even reflect on the question?

Truly, the act of being ‘busy’ is taking over our lives.  How often do we say or do we hear ourselves or someone else say, “Wow, I am so busy, I can barely catch my breath!” or “I am so busy I am hardly staying afloat, I am swamped and have no time” or “I can’t commit to coming to church on a regular basis because… I’m just too busy!”

Over-committed schedules are taking their toll and stretching families’ emotions, and physical and spiritual health.  When we aren’t able to take control of our schedule we are robbed of time with those family members and friends who matter the most.   We minimize the importance of worship, personal time in prayer with God and therefore have little time for a personal relationship with our Creator!

We are granted a certain number of heartbeats while on Earth.  The ones we use can’t be taken back. Questions arise: How will we use our time?  How will we give of our time?  How do we make our time matter?

I want to challenge you to slow down and in prayer ask God how He wants you to use your heartbeats. 

During this Christmas season, we must always remember how God stepped into OUR time becoming ONE with us, taking on human flesh to SAVE mankind.  Jesus broke into our time to SAVE us and to guide us in using our time living life abundantly, centered in His love and His purpose.

God gives us the time we need to accomplish His desires but it can be impossible for this to happen when we squeeze so many things into our schedule finding our life spiraling out of control.  Especially during the holiday season we find ourselves becoming anxious and more irritable in all the frenzy.  

Let us remember that God gives us one thousand four hundred forty minutes a day.  That’s about 86,400 precious heartbeats a day!  It is our responsibility to decide how we will use these sacred heartbeats 

It is time to take control of our date book and make some hard choices about our priorities.   You might want to cancel a few things that you have overbooked so you might enjoy a Christmas season that is stress-free and, most importantly, Christ-centered.  It’s about preparation, prayer and making that daily connection, which is so vital to our spiritual life. 

The Shepherds heard angels on that first Christmas as they spent quiet nights, wondering and pondering.  We too, are called to listen for the proclamation “Glory to God in the Highest” and seek the newborn King.

Just as the three wise men studied the stars, recognizing the bright Star leading them to the Christ child, we too, must follow the light that leads us to Jesus and present Him with the gift of our open hearts as a dwelling place.  Let us make time to focus, prioritize, and center our lives on Christ, our Savior and the newborn King.

“Your date book is your creed.  What you believe in, you have time for.”  Anonymous

+  Fr. Tom