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February 5 - March 6, 2025
“We should take it as our aim,” he wrote, “to live our lives entirely without hurry. We should form a clear intention to live without hurry. One day at a time. Trying today.”
But in time, I detox. Feel my soul open up. There are no fireworks in the sky. Change is slow, gradual, and intermittent; three steps forward, a step or two back. Some days I nail it; others, I slip back into hurry. But for the first time in years, I’m moving toward maturity, one inch at a time. Becoming more like Jesus. And more like my best self. Even better: I feel God again. I feel my own soul. I’m on the unpaved road with no clue where it leads, but that’s okay. I honestly value who I’m becoming over where I end up.
For me Jesus remains the most brilliant, most insightful, most thought-provoking teacher to ever walk the earth. And he walked slowly
“There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
Corrie ten Boom once said that if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy. There’s truth in that. Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect—they cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul.
“The number one problem you will face is time. People are just too busy to live emotionally healthy and spiritually rich and vibrant lives.”
“God did not create hurry.”
Hurry and love are oil and water: they simply do not mix.
Love, joy, and peace are the triumvirate at the heart of Jesus’s kingdom vision. All three are more than just emotions; they are overall conditions of the heart. They aren’t just pleasant feelings; they are the kinds of people we become through our apprenticeship to Jesus, who embodies all three ad infinitum. And all three are incompatible with hurry.
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.
Hurry kills relationships. Love takes time; hurry doesn’t have it. It kills joy, gratitude, appreciation; people in a rush don’t have time to enter the goodness of the moment. It kills wisdom; wisdom is born in the quiet, the slow. Wisdom has its own pace. It makes you wait for it—wait for the inner voice to come to the surface of your tempestuous mind, but not until waters of thought settle and calm. Hurry kills all that we hold dear: spirituality, health, marriage, family, thoughtful work, creativity, generosity…name your value. Hurry is a sociopathic predator loose in our society.
Meaning, in the chronic problem of human beings’ felt experience of distance from God, God isn’t usually the culprit. God is omnipresent—there is no place God is not. And no time he isn’t present either. Our awareness of God is the problem, and it’s acute.
life is fleeting. One New Testament writer called it “a wisp.”8 There’s simply no way to do it all, at least not this time around.
“We find God’s will for our lives in our limitations.”10
how we spend our time is how we spend our lives. It’s who we become (or don’t become).
Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
Keep in mind, the Greek word that we translate “salvation” is soteria; it’s the same word we translate “healing.” When you’re reading the New Testament and you read that somebody was “healed” by Jesus and then you read somebody else was “saved” by Jesus, you’re reading the same Greek word.
If you want to experience the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.
Your life is the by-product of your lifestyle. By life I mean your experience of the human condition, and by lifestyle I mean the rhythms and routines that make up your day-to-day existence. The way you organize your time.
But Jesus realizes that the most restful gift he can give the tired is a new way to carry life, a fresh way to bear responsibilities….
Like two oxen in a field, tied shoulder to shoulder. With Jesus doing all the heavy lifting. At his pace. Slow, unhurried, present to the moment, full of love and joy and peace. An easy life isn’t an option; an easy yoke is.
It’s to create space for the vine to grow and bear fruit.
Jesus isn’t anti-command, not by a long shot. But for Jesus, leadership isn’t about coercion and control; it’s about example and invitation.
