To procastinate or not to procrastinate?
Well, the blog is back after too long away!
This weekend in my homily we are watching the first two minutes of a TED talk by Tim Urban called "Inside the mind of a master procrastinator"
Click here for the whole talk
At lot of people can resonate with the way we tend to put off difficult, boring or unpleasant tasks, and the way that sometimes catches up with us.
I then contrast that very human tendency with the very graced way that Peter & Andrew, James and John respond when Jesus calls them in Matthew 4:12-23. When Jesus calls, they respond at once (or immediately in other translations).
But not everyone who Jesus calls acts this way. There are others who procrastinate, saying yes, I'd love to, but first let me finish what I'm doing or let me go and do that thing first such as in Matt 8:21 or Luke 14:18-20. But they never return, and we never even learn their names. They are the unnamed, uncredited extras in the drama of the gospels.
So when we know with confidence that God is calling us to something, we have a model for how to respond: at once. And I'd love to leave it there and optimistically, have a parish full of wildly enthusiastic parishioners signing up to everything on offer. But, in maturity, we don't make hasty decisions. We need to put prayerful discernment in to our major life choices. The more important, the more prayer is needed. One way is to use imaginative prayer where we step into the shoes of the fishermen in the gospel scene, and let ourselves hear Jesus call to us. And by doing this a few times, and by taking not of what attracts us and what we resist, we can both learn what God is calling us to, and refine our capacity to respond. A good guide on this kind of prayer can be found here
This weekend in my homily we are watching the first two minutes of a TED talk by Tim Urban called "Inside the mind of a master procrastinator"
Click here for the whole talk
At lot of people can resonate with the way we tend to put off difficult, boring or unpleasant tasks, and the way that sometimes catches up with us.
I then contrast that very human tendency with the very graced way that Peter & Andrew, James and John respond when Jesus calls them in Matthew 4:12-23. When Jesus calls, they respond at once (or immediately in other translations).
But not everyone who Jesus calls acts this way. There are others who procrastinate, saying yes, I'd love to, but first let me finish what I'm doing or let me go and do that thing first such as in Matt 8:21 or Luke 14:18-20. But they never return, and we never even learn their names. They are the unnamed, uncredited extras in the drama of the gospels.
So when we know with confidence that God is calling us to something, we have a model for how to respond: at once. And I'd love to leave it there and optimistically, have a parish full of wildly enthusiastic parishioners signing up to everything on offer. But, in maturity, we don't make hasty decisions. We need to put prayerful discernment in to our major life choices. The more important, the more prayer is needed. One way is to use imaginative prayer where we step into the shoes of the fishermen in the gospel scene, and let ourselves hear Jesus call to us. And by doing this a few times, and by taking not of what attracts us and what we resist, we can both learn what God is calling us to, and refine our capacity to respond. A good guide on this kind of prayer can be found here
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