Just be Present!

“You don’t need a plan; you just need to be present.” ~Bob Goff

(Bob Goff is a writer and an international motivational speaker. In 2016 he launched the Dream Big Framework, a curriculum and workshop designed to motivate people to accomplish their biggest dreams and ambitions)

We have all come up against those occasions both in our own lives and in the lives of others, when we have uttered these words, “I don’t know what to do!” either aloud or silently. For some reason we seem to be hard-wired to feel that we must have the answers, must know what to do, or we aren’t being any help at all.

Over the last 8 months I have come to appreciate those people who can just be present, without feeling the need to ‘do’ something. They are the ones who know instinctively what it is that they need to do. They are acting in response to the present moment, not a previously thought-out plan or agenda.

It is actually a little like prayer. Prayer, they say, changes the person praying more than it changes what is prayed about. And I wondered exactly why that was the first time I heard this. Is it because prayer opens us up to the needs of others? I have a friend who once told me that after she prayed she would sometimes get ideas of things that she could do that might help the situation she was praying about, things she had never considered before. By the act of praying, she had made herself present in, or open to, those situations.

It says in Ephesians 2:10 [NIV] For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” For me, this means more than ever that my job here on earth is to look after the oppressed, the widows, the orphans, all those who I can help in any way. But not using my own agenda whatever that might be, rather being open to the present moment and situation and taking my cues from it. As I recently heard someone say, “We should be funnels of God’s love to others!” Funnels don’t make any plans. They just pass the love along…

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