Do you count how many shopping baskets are in each line at the store to make sure to stand in the shortest line?
Do you find yourself frustrated when someone is driving slower than the speed limit in front of you?
Do you see multi-tasking as a “normal” part of life that you should embrace?
American culture has exalted “busy” as a sign of a successful life, but it’s a lie from the pit of hell. It was Corrie ten Boom who once said that if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy. There is also a Finnish proverb that quips, “God did not create hurry.”
Hurry Impedes Kingdom Work
Walter Adams, the spiritual director to C.S. Lewis said: “To walk with Jesus is to walk with a slow, unhurried pace. Hurry is the death of prayer and only impedes and spoils our work. It never advances it.”
Ronald Rolheiser, a Catholic writer says this,
Today, a number of historical circumstances are blindly flowing together and accidentally conspiring to produce a climate within which it is difficult not just to think about God or to pray, but simply to have any interior depth whatsoever…
We for every kind of reason, good and bad, are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion.
It is not that we have anything against God, depth, and spirit, we would like these, it is just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens. We are more busy than bad, more distracted than nonspiritual, and more interested in the movie theater, the sports stadium, and the shopping mall and the fantasy life they produce in us than we are in church. Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives.
John Ortberg adds, “For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.”
Jesus Is Never In a Hurry
When we look to Jesus as our example of how to live, his pace is remarkably slow.
In fact, sometimes it looks like he’s irresponsible because he doesn’t hurry to the death bed of several sick people and they die before he arrives. Jesus simply raises them from the dead, even while he is being mocked and laughed at for telling the mourners that the person is only sleeping (Matthew 9:23-26).
Jesus didn’t seem concerned about arriving at a destination. His life was lived “on the way.” Almost every miracle Jesus performs can be looked at as a need that comes in the form of an “interruption.”
Making Room for Divine Appointments
Jesus walked slowly because He knew that what others label “earthly interruptions” are often invitations into divine appointments.
If we are going to wear the light yoke of Jesus and learn from the way He lived His life, we must walk at His pace… slowly.
Sure, there are times to rush in life: when your wife is in labor and going to the hospital, when there’s been an accident, or if you are on a game show.
Otherwise: It’s time to take “hurry” out and bury it in the backyard.
“Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” - Dallas Willard
Holy Spirit, help us walk at your pace, available to love others “on the way,” living like you, Jesus!
That is what we are talking about this Sunday and for the next several months … walking in His steps, at His pace, and experiencing more of the life to the fullest that Jesus came to give us. Join us in person this Sunday or on the stream as I continue this series, “Unforced Rhythms of Grace.”
You can also live stream our 10:00 a.m. service on Facebook and YouTube.
If you missed last week's message, Rhythms #2 - The Easy Yoke - Matthew 11:28-30, click here.
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