The world conditions us to believe that life is best lived at high speed. But the most significant parts of human life cannot be rushed. Slow down so that you can love God and love others. Let your soul learn to walk and not run. Allow God to set the pace!
Read the article Joni mentions here: Hostage to Hurry.
Hi, I'm Joni Eareckson Tada, and I would love to walk.
I guess that goes without saying, right? But my friend Marshall Segal of DesiringGod.org has a different slant on walking. In a recent article for DG, Marshall made a true and unsettling observation. He said, “Many of us have forgotten how to walk. We’re so used to driving, scrolling, and skimming, slow [speed] seems not only inefficient and impractical, but almost immoral. We feel guilty for walking. While I commute to work, covering a dozen miles in just minutes, operating the marvelous and dangerous miracle that is my Honda Civic, I sometimes get restless that I’m not getting more done – that I’m not checking email, or refreshing a feed, or listening to a podcast. Some [people even] text and drive, despite how maddening and unloving that is, in part because driving surely can’t be a sufficiently productive use of time. [So] we’re held hostage by hurry.”
Man isn’t that the truth. I mean, think about it – first thing you do in the morning, before your feet hit the floor, we hit the alarm button on our smartphone and, well, while we’ve got the thing in our hands, we check text messages, take a glance at our Facebook feed, skim notifications, and spot-check our calendar for the day. All this before we even do daily devotions. It is the way we live. And Marshall Segal in his article goes on to say, “When was the last time you felt your soul walk? Our minds and bodies are moving farther and faster than ever today, but the most significant aspects of human life cannot be rushed. Hearts can be stubbornly slow. Prayer is often slow. Meditation is slow. Growth is slow. Love is slow, sometimes painfully so. From the beginning, our souls were made to walk with God, at his pace.”
Well, I tell you what, believe me, living all these years in my wheelchair, I have found that God is, for the most part, very slow. We’re so fast, but he is slow. We’re but for a moment, but he is eternity. And that’s the way grace works. Slowly. It’s the way life transformation happens. We want results now, quick, fast, and it bugs us when at McDonald’s drive-thru, the car in front of us has 5 people who want burgers made their way. All of a sudden we are not the paragons of patience that we think we are. Right there in the drive-thru, if we’re not dragging our hand through our hair, we are – you guessed it – scrolling, swiping, tapping, checking for new text messages, glancing at Facebook, skimming notifications, or reviewing the rest of your calendar for the day. Don’t you hate that? We have been conditioned by the world to believe that hurry is a good thing. But Marshall Segal – and by the way, go to joniradio.org for a link to his article – Marshall says that “To really live – that is to know, and enjoy, and follow Jesus — we need to learn and keep a pace that is human.”
Galatians 5:16-17 puts it this way: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” And then, a couple verses down, we’re told: “Keep in step with the Spirit.” Yep, it’s a virtue; it’s a discipline; it shows self-control when, in this culture, we learn to slow down and live. Again, look for a link to Marshall’s article today at joniradio.org.
© Joni and Friends