麻豆约拍

Good morning

鈥淕oodbye sir, excuse me, I鈥檒l come back later, I haven鈥檛 time just now I must end this letter 鈥� I haven鈥檛 time I鈥檇 love to help, but I haven鈥檛 time

I鈥檇 love to pray, but I haven鈥檛 time and so it is Lord that all men run after time....鈥�

So wrote the French Abbe Michel Quoist in the mid-twentieth century and that was in his marvellous Prayers of Life in which he implies so many of our problems are a result, not of stress or pressure outside ourselves but the priorities which we choose for ourselves each day.

Like the Welsh Poet-Tramp, W.H. Davies who decades earlier complained that we had no time simply to stand and stare. The Abbe points out that our greatest handicap is that at every stage in life we will always find some excuse for running away from the deeper things that matter.

And this applies from pupils burdened with course work and young adults at their sports, or fixing up their new homes to the grandparents, first with their grandchildren and then with their series of treatments until eventually it is too late and they say 鈥淚 have NO MORE time.鈥�

鈥淚s this some big mistake on God鈥檚 part?鈥� he asks, 鈥渟ome miscalculation in his distribution of time to each one of us?鈥�

Or is it, more likely our failure to Carpe Diem 鈥� to grasp the opportunity ever to offer each passing moment back to God so that He may fill it with new life - like water into wine.

And so it is that he ends the prayer not by asking for more time in life in order to achieve this or that, simply for Grace, to do in God鈥檚 time whatever he is calling us to do right now and so we pray

Lord, I HAVE time, all the time in the world found in this present moment. Be with me now and direct me in all that lies ahead.

Amen.