New – Labor Day Reflection

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store way in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

Matthew 6:26-27

I recall a Labor Day more than a few years (or decades) ago, where so many life events were before me and Stephanie. Then in our late teens, no I was 20 years of age, we were sitting on a metal swing in Stephanie’s parents’ backyard on Merry Street pondering the future. Stephanie was at home living with her parents, as was I on Wells Drive, where I was sleeping on the upper bunk bed, with my brother Jimmy in the bottom bunk.  Okay, we were still kids in lots of respects.  

I was four years out of St. John’s Minor Seminary in Savannah, which had closed, and I had been thrust back into home life in Augusta after three years of study toward the priesthood.  Within two years, I met Stephanie at Augusta College, and life changed for the better.  The point here is that we had no idea what was to come, and all we could see was what God put before us, day by day.    

You could say we still had a child-like faith, or perhaps a naiveté, that all would be taken care of, and we didn’t worry about the details and “what if’s” that can dampen our potential.  On that Labor Day in the backyard, we were planning our wedding for December (Stephanie had become Catholic a few months earlier), and I had just signed on for a new job as an agent with MetLife, where my father worked as a sales manager.  My mother worried some that I wouldn’t finish college, with less than a year to go toward graduation, and another year for Stephanie. In retrospect, I was amazed that our parents didn’t try to slow us down and help us rethink our plans.  Maybe they could see the potential that lay ahead. 

Too often, we fret over our future, struggling, for example, to have a solid financial foundation before having children, worrying excessively about retirement savings, and getting frustrated when plans don’t quite work out the way we had intended.  For some, faith can deteriorate into posturing before God that, somehow, your good deeds and good intentions will save you from damnation or ruin in this world, so you better work harder to stay in good stead with the almighty.    

Today is a good day to stop thinking so much about everything, and instead quieting down our environment.  If we just turn down all the noise around us and inside our minds, just maybe we could open-up some sacred space in our minds and hearts, so God’s peace and direction can permeate our failed efforts at self-sufficiency.  If there a swing in your backyard, go out and relax, knowing that your heavenly Father will see to your future. Say thanks to God, recall your many blessings, and just let him “take the wheel” today and tomorrow too!  Great potential lies ahead!

“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Psalm 118

Enjoy the Day!

Joe