Procrastination

Life is short.

Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money. Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin. - James 4:13-17

Today's reading from James is a reminder that we don't like to hear.  Life is short, and it is time we realized it so that we start doing something.

I think the reason life appears to shorten as we age is due to a memory problem.

We remember things out of real time. 

In other words, we are capable of compressing time when we recall an event, or series of similar events, like Thanksgiving celebrations, for example.

When we were young, there weren't many such events to recall on the holidays.  But if a whole series of them were spent the same way, at grandma's for instance, they kind of roll together and seem like one.

Years go by quickly.  So, what can we do about that?

James tells us not to plan.  If we think we have tomorrow and the day after to do what needs to get done, we will do nothing today. 

Putting it off is a sin.

But wait.  Today is Thanksgiving, and what better day to do nothing than that?  We should be thankful for all we have, all we have done, and all that may come our way, right?

But if we also remember that time passes quickly, and the future is not a given for any of us, we might take a moment to take stock.

Where am I now?  What is it I can do, today?

If this is all I have, this one day, what will make the most of it?

So, as we come together to feast with thanks, let us remember all the times we put off the things we felt we should be doing, and be thankful we still have time to do them.

Happy Thanksgiving.

More to come.  I hope.