This is the best day of my life

A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Michael Kelly

Good morning!

The beginning of another week brings fresh promise – but also, maybe, fresh anxiety. Life can sometimes seem so frenetic, and we can feel the temptation to be in a rush around everything.

As a younger man, I was always in a hurry. Patience, I suspect, is a virtue that is cultivated by age and experience. When I was a teenager, I always wanted life to go faster and faster – I was so eager to be an adult.

As a forty-something somewhat grown-up, now I feel like I would like life to slow down. Though I love and admire the passionate and intense impatience of younger people – admirably often aimed at making the world a better place.

Maybe sometimes, as we grow we become cynical and too self-reliant.

In the Bible, Jesus often told his followers that he wished they were more like little children. At first glance, this is curious – but I think what he was talking about was the capacity to be child-like rather than childish.

To be humble, vulnerable, dependent and seeking…

“This is the best day of my life,” one of my nephews frequently exclaims…it could be something as simple as a restaurant serving his favourite flavour of ice cream or an unexpected treat at school where the headmistress has organised a bouncy castle or a picnic to mark an important day.

Aged eight, he’s already had so many ‘best days of his life’ that we’ve all lost count – but I’ll never tire ever of the wide-eyes which greet every new adventure.

So today, I pray to have an open heart and an open mind and to be ready to view the world with those same wide-eyes of a child and embrace the opportunity ahead of me.

Amen.