A Daily Manifesto

"To be or not to be shackled by the grind of living."

There is a sense of incredulity mixed with anxiety, that I watch the days go by... like  leaves falling from a tree. 

The passage of time astonishes me.  Why so?
  
C.S. Lewis puts it this way:"Notice how we are perpetually surprised by Time. (How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up and married! I can hardly believe it!") In heaven's name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal."

Being perpetually astonished at time...
In my perpetual astonishment at time  I desire to be acutely aware of the brevity & unpredictability of my life.  And in my awareness of its very brevity & unpredictability, to live it with purpose and meaning.
Knowing that I am here only for a short time should spur me to overcome the daily tyrannies that keep me from doing the essential things: the ones of real, eternal value.

Starting this year, I decided to live intentionally; to not be bogged down by the call of the laundry, the grocery-shopping, the cleaning, appointments, events, and to sit down and do the things that all these years have been pushed to the back of the list, bumped over and over again by the urgent.

I, henceforth, refuse to be tyrannized  by the urgent.
I will seek to  find meaning to every moment of my existence, to treasure the gems that are waiting at every corner,to exhaust my talents, to listen harder, to  reflect more, and to be really still. 

And what is even surprising, God gives me the grace to live life unshackled. He has  allowed me to accomplish -- in the span of two months--what had been left undone for the past several years.

In his short life on earth, Jesus Christ accomplished his mission. It was He himself who said:  "Let the dead bury their dead."

So it is a big countdown. Days, and weeks and months and years... we will get older, our children will eventually grow up and  move away...the last leaf will fall and we will fly away.

How,then, shall we live?