TIME TO SLOW DOWN

Leviticus 23:3

    There are six days when you may work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a day of sacred assembly. You are not to do any work; wherever you live, it is a Sabbath to the Lord.

                I realized today that I have been infected by a virus. It is not the coronavirus or the flu virus, but it is very real. It is a virus that infects much of our society, yet it goes undetected or unrecognized by most of us. What is this virus, the social pandemic lurking the shadows? It is the virus of hurry.

                We live in a society that is always in a hurry. We rush through our meals barely even tasting our food. We rush through projects so that we can get on to the next project. We rush through our days without a clear sense of where we are going. We often express our hurry with statements like, I’m so busy that I don’t know if I’m coming or going. Hurry and busyness have become the norm for life in the 21^st century, at least in America. We are always in a hurry to get somewhere or accomplish some project.

                For example, I try to start each day with a time of personal devotions. There is no set amount of time that I am required to spend, nor is there a definite time when I must be done. Yet, many mornings I find myself rushing through my devotions rather than being fully engaged. I rush through my prayers so that I can get to my journal. I rush through my journaling so that I can get to my scripture reading. I rush through my scripture reading so I can get to my devotional reading. And I rush through my devotional reading so that I can get on with my day. There are days when I come to the end of my devotions and wonder what I accomplished.

                Hurry is our enemy is so many ways. On the most profound level it stunts our spiritual growth. Like physical exercise, we cannot rush through our spiritual disciplines and hope to gain the maximum benefit from them. By their very nature, spiritual disciplines are intended to be engaged in at a leisurely pace. We cannot truly develop our relationship with Christ on the run. Spiritual growth demands times of reflection, meditation, and listening. Our daily devotions are not a project to be accomplished and checked off of our list. It is to be a time to genuinely commune with God; to let Him speak into our lives.

                Hurry is the enemy of our human relationships. Hurry fosters the superficial. When we are consumed with hurry and busyness, we have little time to really get to know others. Building a genuine relationship with someone takes time, often unstructured time. There needs to be time to talk and to listen. There needs to be time to experience life together; to share common experiences. There needs to be time to process where the relationship is headed.

                Hurry is the enemy of our productivity. Our world continually presses us to be more productive at a faster and faster pace. Unfortunately, those two things actually work against one another. The faster we work, the less productive we become. We make more mistakes. We make bad choices that call for extra effort to correct. Hurry robs us of the purpose and meaning of our work. There is little satisfaction in our work when we are constantly rushing to get to the next project, without any time to evaluate or appreciate what we have accomplished. As a woodworker, I know that hurry makes for a poor end result. As the saying goes, measure twice, cut once. I get the greatest satisfaction, not from the projects that I threw together in a hurry, but from the projects I invested intentional time and effort.

                Hurry is the enemy of our physical health. Hurry leads to increased stress, which leads to high blood pressure, which leads to coronary heart disease. Hurry is a major contributing factor to excess weight gain. Hurry often eliminates exercise from our routine. Hurry and busyness rob us of the rest we need to function at our best.

                When God designed this world, He programmed in the need for rest. He designed us to need sleep on a daily basis. He also commanded that once a week we would slow down and rest. You could say that God mandated time to slow down. Without being legalistic about the Sabbath, we all need to schedule down time into our lives on a regular basis. God did not design us to be on the go 24/7. God designed our need for rest to remind us that we are dependent upon Him. By intentionally taking time to rest, we are affirming that we can trust God with our lives and our livelihood. Every night when we lay our head on the pillow and go to sleep, we are unconsciously affirming that God is in control of our world and it is not dependent upon us making things work.

                I wonder if God has allowed this current pandemic to occur so that we will slow down and rest. In the Old Testament, every seventh year was to be a sabbatical year; a year of rest when no normal work was done. The people had to trust God to provide, and He did. This pandemic, in many ways, has been an enforced time of rest. Many of the things that consume our time have been placed on hold. Families are spending more time together. Most people are being forced to live at a much slower pace. For many it has been hard to really slow down. They are in a hurry to get past this and get back to normal. I don’t blame them, but I would suggest that maybe they need to change their perspective. We all have a great opportunity to slow down, to reevaluate what is really important in life, and to actually rest for a time. We can waste this opportunity by maintaining a mental state of hurry, or we can take advantage of this time to get our life back in order.

                There is no vaccine against hurry, but there is a cure. It is called rest. Life is short as it is. Each moment, each experience is precious. Let us not miss the many good gifts that God has in store for us by rushing through life. When we get to the end of our life we can look back and wonder what happened, or we can cash in the dividends of a life well spent and well lived. The choice is up to us.

Matthew 11:28-30

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."