No Time Like the Present. No Present Like the Time.

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Sometimes, I like to challenge myself to write about a specific topic. I was pondering the phrase “No time like the present” one morning, and started wondering if it could be applied to practicing the values of the Path. When I presented this idea to Courtney, she offered a slightly different wording: “No present like the time” and kind of blew my mind. I would like to examine both phrases and how they fit with the ideas found in Path doctrine.

The phrase “No time like the present” comes from Proverbs Exemplified by John Trusler, a compiler of proverbs, who goes on to say: “…a thousand unforeseen circumstances may interrupt you at a future time.” I take it as an exercise in Mindfulness; of being here, now. When you have a task to complete or work to be done, best to begin as soon as you are ready, in case you run into obstacles you could not have predicted. If you procrastinate and do it at the last minute (which I confess to doing sometimes when writing sermons), all sorts of things could come up and you would end up not doing it at all, and then where will you be? In a bad place, that’s where. The lesson here being to do it now, if you can.

I really like “No present like the time” because it is absolutely true. Every gift you give ultimately represents some amount of time. It may be as obvious as a gift of spending time together (my favorite kind of gift), but if you make something for someone, you are giving them a gift of the time it took to make it. If you bought something, you probably had to work a certain amount of time to have the money for that item. Even if you are retired, you are sacrificing your time enjoying that money to give a gift to another. So there really is no present like the time.

I would like to finish this little tidbit of a sermon with the following piece of advice:

There is no time like the present to present a present of time.

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