Good Intentions…. To Actions

Well I’m back from my week long journey to Florida  and it’s time to restart the BLOG. Here we go.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I recently read that St. Bernard of Clairvaux first coined the phrase…. gee, I thought my mother came up with it. It signifies the difference between what someone intends to do and what they actually do, i.e. the road to failure is made easier by good intentions. It’s funny that sometimes I feel like I’ve accomplished something  because I thought it was a good idea and was considering doing it….. “I decided to go on a diet…good job Dave…. yep, just call me “Skinny”…. but I never got around to actually doing it. 

My daughter recently sent me an article that related how even some great saints struggled with this approach. St. Augustine saying “ Lord make me a good and chaste Christian, but not now.” St. Ephraim lamenting, “at evening I say tomorrow I will repent, but when morning comes, joyously I waste the day…. yes I need to do better ….. I need to bear down and work at overcoming my bad habits, but now is not the time…. tomorrow I will make a new start !” Yikes I think Augie and Eph could fit right in my men’s group. 

I think part of our problem in completing these grand tasks is that we know there’s a cost to doing them… it’s not going to be easy to accomplish them … I’d rather talk and dream about them, then actually do them. Yet by the grace of God we often can actually jump in and begin. We can make a good beginning to the task. That’s an important first step.

After a fair amount of hand ringing, I recently decided to go to a retreat/conference in Florida and then drive to my brother’s place some 3 hours away for a visit. I was pretty confident that the Lord wanted me to go, but I had my adding machine out “calculating the cost”. What used to be pretty routine, like making my way thru the airport, renting a car and traveling along unfamiliar roads, is now much more of a challenge. Well, I decided to launch out, and it went very well… not easy, but well. I’m very happy I went. The conference was good, the visit to my brother who is now 82 and ailing was a “divine appointment”, and the last leg of the journey to meet Judy at her brother’s new home was also very good. 

So, I’m back in the comfort of our little apartment and the journey seems like a dream, but I believe the Holy Spirit inspired journey out of my “comfort zone” was good for me and others. Thanks to all who helped make it happen. 

There’s many more stories from the trip that will probably find their way into the BLOG in the days ahead, but at least this “good intention” to travel to a retreat and visit family became a reality. And this was good news.