From Rev. Frank Fornaro – October 15, 2020

Dear friends,

“The summer flew by!”  That’s what people are saying.  “I don’t know where the time goes.”  “Fall is in the air, before you know it, we will be getting ready for Christmas.”  Time!  There really is only so much of it every day, every week, every month, every year. And it so quickly and sometimes stealthily passes by without our notice.  During this period in our lives, time seems to be all we have.
 
Like all things in our God-given life, time is a gift.  God has given us time in our lives to do what we have to do: time to work, time to play, time to rest. However, we don’t spend time noticing.  Noticing the people around us; noticing what we are feeling as we go through our day; noticing how we are affected by all we do; noticing how we affect others gets lost sometimes in our worry and anxiety.
 
Time is precious; it doesn’t matter how old we are.  It is a precious gift from God to us so that we can find and see the joy in our lives; it is a gift that offers healing; it gives room to think and ponder.  We take it for granted until we are at the end of the day and realize that somehow we do not have more left.  Have we done what we needed to do AND used some of the time for self-care; family relationships; friendly conversations; loving our neighbors?   Did we spend too much time distracted by television, radio, more work than necessary?
 
The first day of fall was September 22.  We don’t normally think of this season of the year as a time when we can take time.  Everything is gearing up.  The season brings holidays and holy days which encourage us to be busier, really, than we truly need to be.  It takes an effort of a different kind to take time for the important things.  I encourage you to do it anyway. It seems the world has given us a forced opportunity to pay attention to time.
 
Even so, time flies!  Don’t let it go without noticing.  See/connect with the people around you whenever you can. Pray for and contact those who love you and whom you love; acknowledge the people that pass you by. Take a part of this gift of time for yourselves: pray, rest, read, think, look out the window, settle into your own being.  And in that place of your own being, know that God is present within you—noticing you, seeing you, loving you every moment of your life.