MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend. – Theophrastus

There’s something to ponder.

Gets me thinking about how I have spent my free time the past few days. Not that I had any free time. Is there really any such thing as free time? You’ve heard the phrase “time well spent?”

I had lunch with my friend Richard the Sage today. Over a very tasty cup of soup I confessed I was having trouble budgeting my time, getting things done. It seems sometimes that the harder I concentrate on my vision, the more I lose my sight. I asked if he might help me come up with a plan. Richard the Sage said, no he would not. He feels, the way I am wired, that “plan” is a word loaded with potential pitfalls and suggested I use the word “path” instead. And, yes, he would be happy to help me with the path.

The path. I do like that better.

So we talked vision and possibility alongside burden and practicality and I agreed to spend some time getting all my thoughts down on paper, which I will give to him so he can ponder it all and help me put together a pla… I mean help me see a path. He said a lot of other things but I was concentrating on the soup and have forgotten most of it.

Next time we’ll just meet over coffee.

Years can pass by without you realizing what is happening and you wake up one day and you are in your 40s and your son is away at college and it hits you… This won’t last forever. St. Augustine once said “God has promised forgiveness to your repentance; but he has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.”

I remember talking with another friend of mine, Rick the Thoughtful, about the idea that God always rejoices when we dare to dream. I had heard someone say that “we are actually much like God when we dream. The Lord exults in newness, delights in stretching the old. He wrote the book on making the impossible possible.” I asked Rick the Thoughtful if this was a theologically sound statement and he felt that, indeed, it is.

I like that.

Try this sometime. Sit down with pad and pencil and start writing down all the things you feel you need to do, love to do, want to do; all the things you feel pressured to manage, all the things you feel are heavy on your heart. Write down dreams you have. Picture your life ten years down the road. What do you want it to look like? Are you on “a path” toward realizing that picture. Jot it all down, even fleeting thoughts that move you; the shoulds and the woulds and the coulds and even the if onlys. Don’t hurry. Getting all this down may take some time but find the time to do it.

Then give it all to Richard the Sage, buy him a bowl of soup and see what he has to say.