1Thess 4:1

We urge you and appeal to you in the Lord to make more and more progress in the kind of life you are meant to live.

 

Augustine once said: ‘Keep on walking!’. By that, he meant keep on making progress in the spiritual life. We either go forward or go back. There is no such thing as being stationary in our relationship with God. St Paul is saying the same thing. Once we have encountered the Lord, things are never the same again. We can, of course, turn our backs on him. In which case, we go backwards and further and further away from him. But once we decide to follow him, our lives are changed. Like the Magi, we return to our lives ‘by a different way’. There will be times when we feel we are making no progress at all. At other times, we may feel that things are going great. How we ‘feel’ is not the issue. The issue is to make a daily commitment to follow Jesus.  

You can do this very simply: each morning when you get out of bed and before jumping into the shower, just sit on the edge of the bed and offer up the day to God. Ask God to guide you and give you the grace you need for that particular day. Think no further ahead. And perhaps try to recollect some of things that you have to do and commend them to God. Without realising it, if you do that each day you will ‘make more and more progress in the kind of life you are meant to live’.

Then, at the end of each day thank God for all the ways in which he has been good to you through others. It may be a kind word from someone; a chance encounter with an old friend; a particularly helpful shop assistant or bus driver. Often it is in the little things that God blesses us. But they are all signs that God loves us, and through them, he is telling us that we are making progress after all.

A reflection written by Paul Graham O.S.A., St Joseph's Broomhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland

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