"I just can’t seem to find enough time to pray."

As one day succeeds another, so does a person pile his acts, one upon another, to form either an inescapable fate or a high destiny. As emotion after emotion flows over his life, or tears along as a raging torrent, it leaves its mark upon the life for the world to see, and seeing, to read. A person’s acts build milestones on life’s pathway, all following some definite pattern. Each milestone bears the record of that particular portion of life’s journey, from infancy to maturity. If you would know the person, read his life’s milestones, whether of joy, or stressful struggles.

Any of us may walk a line of fate in haphazard, uncharted, undirected fashion, and at the end of the line have the pleasure of blaming fate for the ending as our only fulfillment. We may drift with the tides, washing back and forth over the same old lessons, we may float with the current of the River of Life, but our fate will be the same – nothing for nothing! Life will bestow no rewards or laurels if we make no effort, no struggle to gain strength.

We may frown when our plans go wrong. We may curse and grow into a fury when life goes against us, knowing in our hearts that even the single-celled creatures share with us and use the same ability. If we continue to react in such ways about events that are outside our control, the milestones we build along our path of life will grow smaller until they shrink into nothingness. Our life will become ever more circumscribed, until it fades into the silence we call "death."

Only a few persons are great enough in soul desire to hold the destiny of nations in their hands, and only another few are great enough to build empires of success. However, they are always those who set aside all cursing and blaming of fate and move forward upon their own paths of destiny to a well charted and self-directed life. Such persons hew out the path for themselves as they go, conquering all manners of obstacles that life seems to glory in placing before the advance of civilization. These people develop the courage to conquer each succeeding obstacle by conquering the one standing in the middle of their pathway now. They forget how hard the path will be ahead, while they use all their strength to mount the barriers as they come to them.

We would never advance if we could see every obstacle between us and our goal from the very start. Most of us would never do anything if we knew exactly how difficult the path was going to be! Courage, confidence in our ability to conquer, and a growing faith, is life’s reward for each step we take, for each obstacle we overcome along the way of destiny.

The difference between the line of fate and the Path of Destiny is so small at first that we may miss the meaning of the signs pointing the way. With fate, we let life dictate to us, but with destiny we dictate to life. The turning point comes when we step off our fate line onto our Path of Destiny, and that instant arrives when we turn from drifting with the current, the easy ways of living, and take on the hard way of struggle, when we turn to the Light and declare that we have become the master of our fate!

One turning point always comes to make us into a conqueror-to-be. If we are afraid to take the chance, afraid to leave our present sheltered place, afraid to move out of our little rut, we doom ourselves to end as the plaything of life, a weakling who lives by life’s dictation.

It is such a small turning that we never know when we will reach it. It usually comes suddenly, and we may allow it to pass without recognizing it as a milestone. Only upon looking backward can we see that we missed deciding at the right time. Of course, this happens only when we have allowed our vision of life to grow dim, our heart’s desires to burn out, and obstacles that fill us with fear and discouragement to block our life’s goals.

To drift, taking no action at such a turning point in life, causes a dry rot that continues until we bury the soul under a featherbed of self-pity, and physical decay sets in to limit the body. None of this is noticeable at first. Soul retrogression is subtle and slow, and shows itself only when we must face some situation requiring great strength of heart and mind.

The many struggles to conquer fate toughens our fiber, making us able to defend ourselves against any blow of fate. We develop the courage, faith and the wisdom needed to conquer the world with each new gain in conquering the "little me" of self.

When we realize we have missed the turning, we can, with deliberate intent, turn back across the morass, hewing a path through the fallen timbers of our past "good intentions," left scattered carelessly as our life advanced. We reach that place where we did not act in strength, where we were afraid to meet life with enough faith in "things to come." From this vantage point we can rebuild our whole life on a new Path of Destiny, where we truly become the master of our fate, where we can use all of our newly unfolding courage and strength in "right use," where we stand and let the winds blow, knowing they cannot blow down our walls again. After such mental "housecleaning," we know that any struggle and effort we make to conquer obstacles, any blows of fate are well worth the price paid while we rebuild the milestones along our Path of Destiny.

Hour by relentless hour, eternity rolls on in vast cycles of time, through space until the finite mind can scarcely grasp the scope. Reason totters in contemplation of the immensity of time, space and the universe, unknown and uncharted, which new scientific findings always bring us.

Each faces the same relentlessly flowing time. None is free from this subtly grasping thief of life. Prince and pauper alike must contemplate its coming and going. No one can stop time in its passing, no one can bring it back to be used again, no one can open or close time’s cycles. Time moves on, fatal second by second, without asking anyone if it may, taking with it life’s expression for all alike.

Some savant said that we are always standing upon a single point in time and space that we call the "Now." Therefore, as each hour enters our life, we are standing at a point "from which eternity stretches in every direction." This is the only eternity that anyone will ever possess. We do possess this important moment that we call "now," as much as we can ever possess anything. "Now" is the only time we dare count upon fully.

This new hour, approaching out of the depths of time, comes shining, golden and Light-filled, ready for us to imprint with our life’s record of fulfillment. We can fill it with laughter, life, glory and triumph, or turn it into grey clouds, black clouds – even into whirlwinds of doubt, fear, anxiety, despair, or into hate and destruction.

The one pure equality, given every person at birth, is a life of twenty-four beautiful hours each day to fill with living. These hours arise from the future and slide into the past, accumulating our life’s record and extending it into eternity. These hours hold the total of our past thinking, our past emotional record of imaginings. The hours faithfully record whatever we have pictured for ourselves.

Since we all have perfect equality in our use of time, we ask, "Why does one person become a success, while another builds for failure? Why does one live in joy and happiness, while another lives in despair and desperation? Why is one person a tramp, and another a conqueror?"

The answer is not as simple as it seems. Though no one can ever take our hours from us, they sometimes dictate their use to us! It may seem we are forced to do tasks foreign to us, to live in ways we dislike physically, emotionally and mentally. Yet, no one can force us to use our hours wrong emotionally or mentally. It is impossible for anyone to dictate how we think or imagine! No one can fill our mental, emotional, imaginative hours for us, for we each do this for our self alone. We cannot hire another to fill our hours for us; each of us must live our inner hours for ourselves.

The reason for life’s inequalities, depends on "how" we spent the hour. Once we find the "how," the "why" becomes easy to see. "How" we spend time will predict our future, and even our end. The outline we use for each day’s hours totals the results of the day. Each hour is a brick we use to build our own future. If we fill them with all kinds of emotional strains and vain imaginings, with worry, doubt, fear and self-pity – or just let them pass by unnoticed, as "easy going" hours unfilled with anything worthwhile – then the past absorbs all their golden, shining light and we send them into eternity as blotches on the face of time. Doing nothing leaves the hours greyed-out. Doing the wrong thing leaves them blackened and floating around "out there" somewhere waiting for us to fill them with Light.

Each hour we spend must return to us under the Law of Hours, a great Law of Life. All misspent hours will haunt us at some future date, when we fully understand this Law.

What are we doing this very hour? What are we planning for the next inexorable hour? What do we plan to do with life itself, with our special talents, with our special privileges? This hour now is our servant, and will go forth to do our bidding, to work our will. How are we sending it out, light or dark? This is our choice, because no forced living or demands from the outside can rob our hours of their gold. Our bodies could faint from labor, our minds refuse to work from physical exhaustion, yet our hearts can sing and our souls can be untouched.

No one can recall an hour to live it over, but anyone can accept responsibility for the present "now" and keep it beautiful, while "thinking" Light into the past misspent hours. Each hour we face, filled with the joy of living, strengthens us for the coming hour, in which our own future is unwritten, untold. Each hour lingers with us for its allotted time and is gone, taking with it a part of us to weave into the record we call our past.

Some refute the idea of a future life, or repudiate the idea of having lived on earth before. Each is entitled to believe what pleases him or her most. Yet having a few good "credits" stored up might be better to than to "chance it" and find that we need them. It couldn’t do any harm to fill those past hours with hardworking honest effort, with joy and laughter-loving living upon which to draw. Empty hours can never pay us dividends on our time investment, and we can’t avoid investing our hours, whether they are overflowing with glory or poorly spent, whether we collect dividends in this lifetime or in some future place.

We should prepare for a future life because we dare not declare none exists. Our past hours should be ready if we need them as a "passport." Filling our hours with joy is just as satisfying in the "here and now." The hour, as it lingers with us, is all we have. It is our record of life, depending upon how we use this ever-coming, ever-moving, ever-receding, ever-present now.

It takes time to live right! It takes time for loving life now! Let us live in the now and not allow our future to slip by without having ever lived it. Let us take each hour’s time and live it fully, in a worthwhile way.