Are you content with just getting by? Are you a minimalist? Do you give the least amount of effort in what you do?This week we look at where we spend our time and how we spend it.Lord, we praise and honor you for creating us. For creating us for you, for relationship, for love. We thank you for the people you have put in our lives to help us grow in relationship, for the world you created that was given to us to manage and tend. Bless this time and may it fill us with the "fire" of the Holy Spirit that we may always have a zeal in our hearts for doing and giving our best to you in our actions, words and relationships. Amen Think about the person you have the best relationship with right now. Now think about someone you don't have a good relationship with. Which do you spend more time with? Which do you pour more of yourself into? My guess is that the people you have a great relationship with that you work hard for it, or maybe it comes easy because you are both willing the good of the other and sacrificing your comfort for them.I also guess that our poor relationships have the opposite qualities. We spend little time with those people and when you do it is strained, uncomfortable, awkward or one sided.Recently, I did some imaginative prayer as part of Ignatian's 19th annotations on the 2 standards of Jesus (good) and the Devil (evil). For a day I was to contemplate how the evil one is a deceitful leader and what his world looks like. How he skillfully summons people/demons and then sends them out into the world, to see and hear how the evil one instructs them to set up snares and chains people to vanity, honor, and pride in order to pave the way for them to other sins and vices.What I imagined wasn't obvious at first, but was seemingly harmless innocent behavior between people buying and selling at an ancient bazaar. The further I went into the city the further I got from Christ and the closer to the devil. As I was pulled through this place I witnessed the changing of behavior along the way. The friendly haggling turned into arguing, stealing, cheating and hoarding. Then they strived in competition, used each other or tried to possess each other falling carelessly into revelry leading to excessive partying and promiscuity. I'll spare you the rest of the details, but it only got worse from there. It revealed to me that the devil loves "lukewarm people". They are ripe for the coercion and much easier to lead to a slippery slope. He creates an environment where we get comfortable with small sins and before we know it we are committing bigger and bigger sins, falling father and farther away from God. At this point, some people prefer ignorance in order to ignore their sins. Joseph was a sinful man like us, and I am sure he had moments when we distanced himself from Jesus and Mary, but we know he always returned.We need to confront our sins and work to rid ourselves of them. We should never be comfortable with them and should always be taking actions to stop them, but we have to keep in mind that it is impossible for us to do this without God's grace. If we rush to do this prematurely or presumptuously, we might find ourselves defeated. In this way, Joseph likely relied on God's grace, as we know he trusted our Lord.The devil uses this tactic to keep us trapped and to call us back. He wants us to feel defeated and discouraged so that we quit and fall back into the life of blissful ignorance. Part of the problem with this is that we aren't ignorant. If we honestly look at our sin, look at ourselves in the mirror, are we convinced we are pure or without fault? The sooner we attack sin the better. The longer we ignore it the more desensitized we become to it.We need to attend to our sin with prudence, patience, diligently uncovering the traps the evil one is laying out for us. It is possible for God to remove sin instantaneously, but normally this is a much more gradual process, which is stickier and...