IF GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE

There’s not a one of us who would not like to have a do-over, who would like to have had countless do-overs in our lives. Sometimes that wish comes immediately after we have messed up something. Sometimes that wish comes only after much reflection, even after years of reflection. We look back at what we have done and know that we could have done better, and that, given a second chance, we would have done better.

The unfortunate reality is that we usually don’t get those second chances. Yes, the team lucks out when the fourth-down pass is incomplete but the defense commits and penalty and the team gets a second chance. Sometimes that second-chance brings success and sometimes it is still another failure. Second chances, do-overs, are never any guarantee that the next time around will be better.

What we must do, of course, is do the best we can in the moment. If we fail, we fail; but we have given it our best shot. That is all we can ask of ourselves and ask of anyone else. Yes, others may have been able to do what we failed to do, but others were not asked to do it. We were and we did our best. And if we were given a second chance, we would fail again because the first time around we gave it all we had, our best.

The truth, of course, is that we don’t always give whatever we are doing our best effort. Them when we reflect back on the truth of that, we can only rue our failure because we cannot go back, undo time, and start over. What was done was done. We move on and hopefully move on realizing why we failed and what we must do the next time around to insure we do not fail again.

Yet, the same is true in living out our daily lives. So often we simply go through the day doing what we normally do, doing the best we can but being rather oblivious about just exactly what we are doing and, really, how important what we are doing is even as it seems so mundane. We do our job, whatever that job is, as best we can, but give little thought to the truth about how important that job is not only to us but to those with whom we work or who reap the benefits of what we do.

No one of us and nothing we do or who we are is unimportant even if we are retired and feel that we have nothing to give to anyone. We always have something to give even if that is simply praying for others. We miss so much of life because we so often do not stop to reflect on just how important what we are doing is, just how important we are, because we are important. We have a calling, a vocation, from God.

All God asks of us is, first, to do the best we can so that there will never be a need for a do- over, a second chance. And second, God asks of us, and we should ask of ourselves, to be present in the moment, to be aware of how important we are to others and how important what we do is to them and to ourselves and to our God.