Reflection
With every action, every thought, every dream we have, each of us is creating a future. Today was tomorrow and will soon be yesterday. It evolves as time moves on. Each of us is an important facet of that whole. Our world did not become what it is without the discoveries, the new insights the good and bad choices that were made in the past. It is vital to be open, to accept new possibilities when exposed to them. It is a way of allowing the truth of the Spirit to foster our evolving transformation and growth. Mulling over new insights and accepting new information can be the path to life giving change. A closed mindedness and rigidity impedes the ongoing revelation of God. No life is insignificant. Who we are makes the difference.
Prayer
Show me your ways, O God; teach me your paths.
Psalm 24
Action
How flexible am I? Do I usually think I already know all the answers? Am I open to other perspectives? Am I willing to consider new information? How do I react to new ideas? Do I see myself as creating the future?
Suggested Readings
The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.
John 3:8
They who have ears to hear, let them hear!
Matthew 11:15
The future starts today, not tomorrow.
Pope John Paul II
Openness is a receptivity to everyone and everything. It is quite fundamentally an other centeredness, a disposition of availability to others.
Wayne Teasdale
The open-minded see the truith in different things; the narrow-minded see only the differences.
Charles Kettering
We are at times too ready to believe that the present is the only possible state of things.
Marcel Proust
Keeping an open mind is a virtue, but not so open that your brains fall out.
Bertrand Russell
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
William Shakespeare
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.
Abraham Lincoln
The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.
Malcolm X
What matters is to live in the present, live now, for every moment is now. It is your thoughts and acts of the moment that create your future. The outline of your future path already exists, for you created its pattern by your past.
Sai Baba
In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Eric Hoffer