“But eventually all of our graves go unattended.”
This quote is attributed to Conan O’Brien after being dismissed from his dream job of hosting The Tonight Show for fewer than eight months. An interesting quote if not a little dark. If nothing else, it might give one reason to contemplate cremation. But, instead of thinking about death and our graves being unattended, how about we focus on how we can make a difference while we are living in the here and now?
I recently read a book entitled The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity by Matthew Kelly. Now, I am not going to tell you what he believes the biggest lie is (hey, then you’d never read the book) but in this book he talks about something he calls “Holy Moments.” According to Kelly, a Holy Moment is a moment when you open yourself to God; a moment where you truly set aside your personal interests and what you feel like doing and for that moment, you do what you prayerfully believe God is calling you to do. In Kelly’s words, a Holy Moment is a moment when you are being the person God created you to be and you are doing what you believe God is calling you to do.
Is that an awesome idea or what? A Holy Moment, a chance to become the person God created you to be! Even better, it is available to anybody regardless of age, gender, race, color, creed, socio-economic level – none of that matters. You simply make the choice to abandon your self-interests and instead, do what you believe God would want you to be doing in that moment – and in doing so, in that moment you become the person God created you to be.
Think about it. Have you ever really thought you were capable, you could be “Holy” enough, to be the person God created you to be? But you can, and the beauty of the Holy Moment concept is you can do it over and over again, hundreds, thousands of different ways and you can make “Holy Moments” a part of your everyday life – EVERY day! Imagine how it would feel to look yourself in the mirror every morning and say, “Today, I am going to find however many ways I can to create Holy Moments and in doing so, be THE person God created me to be.” Which leads me to something I have always believed in but never thought it was possible.
Over the course of our life, we all hit highs and lows, peaks and valleys; life is not a straight line for any of us. We all have our struggles. And while none of us are or ever will be perfect, we want to make a difference! Isn’t that why God put each and every one of us here – to make this world, His world, a better place?
But how do we do that? We are all flawed human beings! We are of the flesh and we are all guilty of sin. But, “what if” each of us made the conscious decision to try to be the very best version of our self? No, we will never achieve perfection, but “what if” there was a way for each of us to truly be the very best version of our self? Well, now I think I know how we can do that! “Thank you” Mr. Matthew Kelly for teaching me and us about Holy Moments and how to turn almost any opportunity into a Holy Moment. All we have to do is to look for those opportunities, abandon our self-interests and make the choice to act on them. In doing so, each of us can become the person God created us to be!
Now, let’s turn this ‘Holy moment concept’ into a simple math exercise. What if 10 of you reading this blog committed to creating 5 Holy Moments each and every week? That would be 50 Holy Moments a week, times 52 weeks in a year, makes 2,600 Holy Moments in a year! Imagine, 2,600 Holy Moments from just 10 individuals who made the choice to live out their “Holy Moments” and in doing so, would not only make God’s world a better place but would become the person who God created them to be. And again, this is just from 10 people! Imagine the impact if 100 people, 500 people, 1,000 people made this kind of commitment? How many “Holy moments” could be created?
As Matthew Kelly explains in his book, this is how we, as believers, Christians who have accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, can make a difference now! This is how Christians can literally change the world.
What could be better than that?
