This Present Moment

Repentance can only happen now

Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

It’s so easy to look back to the past and agonize over our mistakes.

It’s also easy to look forward to the future and fret over our plans for perfection.

What’s not easy is to see this moment right now and be aware of the present opportunity for repentance.

It’s easier to berate myself for losing my cool and yelling at my kids than to look them in the eye right now and acknowledge my fault and humbly ask their forgiveness.

It’s easier to scheme about plans for new and better habits so my mistakes will never happen again than to take one step right now toward healing and reconciliation.

It’s easier to fritter away this moment in frivolity than to act with purpose like the person I say I want to be.

It’s easier to live in the past or the future than in the present.

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

Matthew 7:13-14

The narrow way of conscious, deliberate repentance is only ever open right now.

Today is the day.

Now is the moment.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 3:2 and 4:17

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