07/23/2024
We scan through the news headlines to be “informed,” but never slow down to read the articles. We get frustrated if we have to wait three-extra minutes in traffic. We listen to our podcasts on 2x speed. We get annoyed if our wi-fi download speed is less than lightning fast.
Laura chastises me, rightly so, when I try to finish her sentences, because I think she’s taking too long to tell me something. She tells me that sometimes she doesn’t like eating with me, because I eat so fast, it makes her exhausted. (Why her exhaustion is based on my eating pattern, I’ll never know.)
So, what causes us to hurry? Why do we rush from one activity to another? Are we afraid we’re going to miss something, because we’re taking too long with the task at hand? Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself, and it’s true.” Maybe it is. But I believe we rush through life not only to flee ourselves but also to fill ourselves with anything that can give us our next dopamine hit and assuage the dullness of our perceived boredom.
Not to minimize the struggle many have with ADHD, to a certain extent, our culture has shaped us to have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. I recently read that in any 24-hour period, YouTube creates enough content that if you were to try to watch it all—just what was produced in the past 24 hours—ON DOUBLE SPEED, it would take you 71 years.
Can anybody say, “Information overload?”
Sometimes we feel powerless in our frenetic fight against hurriedness. You might think that it’s a losing battle. But it’s not. The reality is that each and every one of us can do something about our expeditious pace. Are you ready for this? This information can be transformational. But you have to slow down long enough to read the following words:
YOU --- CAN --- SLOW --- DOWN.
That’s right. You can set your own pace. Don’t let others determine the pace for your race. The Apostle Paul gives us this simple guideline: “Keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25). Don’t think you can outpace God. Live in the breathing space of His Spirit. I know you have a lot to do. I do as well. But life is not a 100-yard dash; it’s a marathon, and crossing the finish line first does not make you the winner.
In his excellent book, Three Mile an Hour God, Kosuke Koyama wrote, “Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.”
Or, to put it in the words of the great poet, Winnie the Pooh, “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” And so we shall. I encourage you right now to do a time audit and declutter your calendar where possible. Don’t worry about keeping pace with others; simply learn to keep pace with God.
