Free

God wants my FREE WILL NOW, and not as it is disintegrating into the dust from whence I came…

Cain and Abel (Tate)

I have been thinking about my future.

It is – after all – one thing to think about things when everything is under my control, and quite another thing altogether to consider the future where I cannot control many things at all.

One thing is true, and that is that as I grow older, I am going to grow more frail and less independent.  This is not to say that I shall spend years in a frail and sickly state, but it does mean that when I grow older, I will need to consider all the different elements in my life that might be affected by my reduced capacity in age.

Now, it is possible that I shall be reduced in my physical ability.  Already, I become more tired more easily than I did as a younger person.  Already, I am more prone to physical injury.  A fall on my knee some years ago continues to cause me some discomfort.  Had this occurred at a younger age, it is unlikely that I would have ever continued to experience discomfort in that knee in the years following…

It is also possible that my cognitive abilities will be reduced.  After all, dementia is an increasingly common diagnosis among the elderly in our community.  And even if I do not progress to dementia, I shall – at the very least – be less intellectually “sharp” than I have been in my youth…

And it occurs to me when I think about it like this, that I am required to really think about the implications of submitting my will to the Holy Will of God.  Saint Joseph of Cupertino said, “Clearly, what God wants, above all, is our will, which we received as a free gift from God in creation and possess as though our own. When a man trains himself to acts of virtue, it is with the help of grace from God, from whom all good things come … The will is what man has, as his unique possession.”

And I have been reflecting on that.  After all, if I am one day to lose the sharpness of my will, and I wait to offer my will in subjugation to God, is it not possible that I shall be offering God something that is simply not as good as it could have been?  Surely, God deserves the BEST part of me at my PRIME?  Surely, the God who created me deserves to receive all of my NOW, and not be forced to wait until my dying breath, when I will grudgingly accept the Holy Will of God, because there is no other option for me to accept because I will soon be dead?

And I have been thinking about that today, for it seems that God wants my FREE WILL NOW, and not as it is disintegrating into the dust from whence I came…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.