The Unhurried Word
Jesus never hurried. He was never frazzled, rushed, or frantic. Jesus never panicked. He never scurried or worried or freaked out. He is so unlike me. Jesus is the ultimate gravity of calm, and He draws me into the infinite mass of His glory and goodness and in the weight of that place, I am always at peace.
Spending time with Jesus must seem like such a strange thing to anyone who doesn’t
know Him. Followers of Jesus schedule appointments and create space to talk to and
read about and write to and listen to a Person they cannot see. But the busyness of life so easily goes unchecked and creeps in like vines in the garden that choke out the roses we long to see in bloom.
In the presence of Christ, the relativity of time slows, and He invites us into His
unhurried world. Like Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet while her dear sister Martha scurried and fretted, I want to sit and learn how to find rest for my soul in His gentle heart while the crazy world around me does its crazy. But I am a creature bound by time and choosing to sit with Jesus takes time. Actual minutes tick by when I sit and pray and read God’s Word. Minutes that I can’t get back. Minutes I could be spending on lawns and laundry and other laughably unimportant things. We timebound creatures feel the pull of the ticking clock as we struggle to set aside our frantic and frazzled thoughts long enough to hear the same still small voice that asked Elijah, “What are you doing here?”
That beautiful painful question comes to those who, like Elijah, stop running long
enough to listen. It is one of many questions God wants to ask us and more incredibly still: He wants to listen to our response. Christ invites us to sit at His feet and learn from Him. To take His easy yoke and upon us as He teaches us the unforced rhythms of grace.
But sitting takes time. And we poor Americans have believed the lie that we are
in abject time poverty. The truth is that we have all the time we need to do everything God wants us to do. This little series is meant to encourage all of us who long to sit at the feet of the God who created time, for whom time does not pass and for whom there are no deadlines. They are simple reflections and lessons Jesus taught me as I spent unhurried time in His Word. My hope is that they will encourage you to carve out an unhurried hour or two a week and simply sit and read and listen and obey the word of our Unhurried God. May the Word of Christ richly dwell within us!
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