It seems that we either live to work or work to live. We spend most of our lives working to earn enough money to survive while hoping to save enough so we can one day retire. Even on our days off and when we finally retire, we can often end up working hard enough to make us worn out by the end of the day.
While life can sometimes be relaxing, fun, and easy, it’s pretty tough overall. It’s even tougher if we do it right and don’t just think about ourselves. It takes energy to get up and go to Mass. It takes effort to go the extra mile with someone. Every day we have the ability to choose the easy path or the harder one. While the hard path may make our physical life more difficult, it will also make our eternal life much more pleasant.
Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest.” Just as we work to save up enough to retire, we need to work hard now and save up enough spiritually so that we can one day rest in Jesus’ arms. No one running a race rests during the race. A runner runs hard during the race and rests after the race is over. We all should remember to run hard spiritually during this life. It’s not an easy race and it can be hard to stay strong to avoid all the obstacles in our way or to recover when we trip and fall. There are also so many temptations along the way that try to get us to slow down, stop, or take the easier path. We need to resist these temptations and continue on the path to Heaven.
Too many people overspend and under save during their working life and when they get to retirement they find that they don’t have enough money to retire. We need to make sure that when we get to the end of our life that we have enough spiritual savings to retire in Heaven. Life is so short. If we are lucky, we may get 100 years to make a difference in this life. However, we are destined to live forever. This life is hard and will wear us out, but let’s keep our eyes on Jesus and we will find our rest.
