I have a love/hate relationship with deadlines. 

Deadlines are highly motivating. There is a clear project, direction, and end in sight. Deadlines can often spark creativity. Time instantly becomes more precious and there comes a moment when I just have to commit to a plan and go with it so that the deadline can be met. 

However, deadlines can also be hugely stressful. Deadlines apply pressure to finish a specific project in a specific window of time, even if there are other things I am more interested in focusing on. They can be unrealistic for the scope of a project, especially if a project has evolved to something larger than originally planned. Deadlines can feel defeating when they arrive before I am really ready to present what I’ve been working on. The project is finished in a rush and hasn’t had time to grow to it’s full potential, if it gets completed at all. 

I am a stay at home mom with a love of crafting and gift giving, so my deadlines are mostly self-imposed. The biggest deadline of them all is rapidly drawing upon us – Christmas. There are so many crafters in the world who are right now, in this very moment, scrambling to complete the projects they decided would make excellent Christmas gifts. Maybe they started early, but have so many gifts to make they still aren’t finished yet. Maybe they didn’t realize how long their project would take. Some only just began their crafting in the past few weeks because life and timing got away from them. They woke up on Dec. 1 and realized how many hats they wanted to knit for their co-workers and have been knitting non-stop since then. 

I have been in all of these circumstances. There was even one year I completed a pair of knitted socks for a loved one while we were driving to their house. I have made grand plans only to run out of time. This year, thankfully, my gift making required a large loom that will definitely not fit in the car, so I knew that back up plan would not work. I’m so happy to say that as of Dec. 12, my gift crafting is done (well, for now. There’s always the car ride to whip something else up) (Joke’s on me, I wrote that last line before we left. Guess what I’m doing while we drive…). 

As it does every Advent, the Church asks us to consider another deadline, a rather final one – the Second Coming of Christ. It actually brings a whole new meaning to this compound word we use so frequently – Dead. Line. A line which beyond is death. Christ’s return to earth is difficult for us to grapple with. It is a deadline, to be sure. Yet Jesus told us that we would not know the timing of it’s arrival. How are we supposed to prepare for a deadline that we don’t know the time or location of?

First and foremost, we listen to and pray with Scripture. We listen to John the Baptist, crying out in the desert for repentance. We listen to Jesus in His parables that teach us to stay awake and alert. We listen to St. Paul when he tells us to pray without ceasing, and to rejoice in the faith and salvation we have from Jesus Christ.

Second, we continue to seek out God in our everyday ordinary existence. This means looking for opportunities to love our neighbor. If we can go to bed every day thinking about the ways we helped others, served others, died to our own selfishness, and extended God’s love to those we met (be they new people or the same people we share each day with), we will be well on our way to heaven.  

Just because we don’t know when Jesus will come back does not mean the project of salvation isn’t the highest priority. Of all the things on your to-do list today, of all the projects and plans you would like to accomplish by a certain deadline, where does God’s plan for your sainthood fall?