This past month, God has definitely been working to improve my humility in every direction. Time and again, He has shown for me areas where I have developed a bad case of spiritual pride and He has not hesitated to point out to me the inherent hypocrisies. Today, He allowed me to see just how easy it is to lose salvation.
Now, because God loves me and has been so diligent in pointing out to me my flaws and faults and sins, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I needed to go to confession this week if I were going to be able to receive my Lord in good conscience on Sunday. However, I chose to allow myself to get distracted, to procrastinate, and to put off my preparations to go until 3:50. By the time everything was all said and done, and I was sitting down in the pew waiting it was already 4:30 pm. There were five people ahead of me. This is not usual. Most of the time the line for confession is incredibly short, if there even is one.
As things turned out, four penitents later, it was time for Mass to begin and I still hadn't been able to go to confession. While sitting there waiting, however, I realized that this is a perfect example of how easy it is to lose salvation. We keep putting off doing what we know we need to do, all the while presuming we can always do it later or that we'll have enough time to get it done when we get around to it. We choose the world over God, choose to continue sinning rather than turning to God and amending our lives while we still have the opportunity.
This is what it must feel like, on a very small scale, to realize with horror that you have run out of time to fix things and make them right with the Lord. This is just a small taste of what it must be like to watch as those Pearly Gates close and you know that through your own choices, and no one else's, that you've lost your last chance at Paradise. I thank God that He loves me so much that He is willing to do something like this in order to draw my attention to the dangers of procrastination and of putting the things of this world ahead of Him.
The truth is that we are not guaranteed extra time. We are not promised one single minute. We can't assume there will be a next time, or a tomorrow. Every minute of our lives is a gift from God and an opportunity to repent and make the necessary changes to our lives that will allow us to be with Him. However, what we do with that time, what choices we make, that's all on us. He has given us the gift of free will, and He won't interfere with that gift.
Now, because God loves me and has been so diligent in pointing out to me my flaws and faults and sins, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I needed to go to confession this week if I were going to be able to receive my Lord in good conscience on Sunday. However, I chose to allow myself to get distracted, to procrastinate, and to put off my preparations to go until 3:50. By the time everything was all said and done, and I was sitting down in the pew waiting it was already 4:30 pm. There were five people ahead of me. This is not usual. Most of the time the line for confession is incredibly short, if there even is one.
As things turned out, four penitents later, it was time for Mass to begin and I still hadn't been able to go to confession. While sitting there waiting, however, I realized that this is a perfect example of how easy it is to lose salvation. We keep putting off doing what we know we need to do, all the while presuming we can always do it later or that we'll have enough time to get it done when we get around to it. We choose the world over God, choose to continue sinning rather than turning to God and amending our lives while we still have the opportunity.
This is what it must feel like, on a very small scale, to realize with horror that you have run out of time to fix things and make them right with the Lord. This is just a small taste of what it must be like to watch as those Pearly Gates close and you know that through your own choices, and no one else's, that you've lost your last chance at Paradise. I thank God that He loves me so much that He is willing to do something like this in order to draw my attention to the dangers of procrastination and of putting the things of this world ahead of Him.
The truth is that we are not guaranteed extra time. We are not promised one single minute. We can't assume there will be a next time, or a tomorrow. Every minute of our lives is a gift from God and an opportunity to repent and make the necessary changes to our lives that will allow us to be with Him. However, what we do with that time, what choices we make, that's all on us. He has given us the gift of free will, and He won't interfere with that gift.
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