Wednesday, April 01, 2009

The Ordinary Man or Woman

Here is Thomas Kelly's description of the ordinary man.

"The ordinary man is busy earning a living, exercises care, caution, foresight. He calculates probabilities. He studies the past in order to predict and control the future. Then when he has weighed all his factors and plotted the outcome, with energy and industry he wills himself into persistent activity along the lines of calculated wisdom. The now is merely an incidental dividing point, unstable, non-important, except as by its unstaying migration we move ahead into the richer meadows..."

Ordinary men and women get a lot done, but at too great an expense. They sacrifice all the "nows" in order to arrive at some "then". The "then" finally arrives and the ordinary man or woman suddenly realizes that "then" is really always "now". "Then" is always beyond our reach. Now is not.

Learn to enjoy now. Learn that now is as rich as it gets. Learn to sit still and be filled with God's presence right now.

Now is limitlessly enjoyable and it is always now. Right now close your eyes and say "Jesus, you are welcome here." Don't rush away to earn a living, exercise care, caution or foresight. Don't calculate probabilities. Don't study the past or the future.
Enjoy now.

Don't be ordinary. Enjoy now with Him.

When you learn to enjoy now, your life will be anything but ordinary.


For further reading on now get a copy of Thomas Kelly's A Testament to Devotion

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