What good does it do for you to finish first if you are actually running the wrong race? Most of us have gotten pretty good at running hard. The accelerated pace of daily life often forces us to push ourselves hard to keep up. We may not even notice the cost of this relentless acceleration. But it is easy to find ourselves being very protective, even stingy, with our time. Even with God!
But we are given new life and possibilities in proportion to how open we are to receiving and responding to them! How many insights, invitations, new experiences, and new opportunities are we being given, daily, that we do not even recognize, because we are moving too quickly to even notice them?
The prayer intention of Ignatius Loyola from the early stages of the Spiritual Exercises,
I pray for the grace to be totally available to the God who loves me so totally is a beautiful invitation to slow down long enough to allow God more space to love us into new directions, to show us things that, on our own, we can’t imagine. This prayer is a simple expression of love and gratitude that any of us can echo—a freeing prayer that opens up a horizon of possibilities.