God is not in a Hurry
It was Christmas Eve, there was a light snow falling and I was wandering around to different grocery stores trying to find some dried mushrooms to make some traditional Slovak soup.
A mom was rushing into the store with her little boy riding on the front of the grocery cart and he was asking, “Why you in such a hurry mommy, why you in such a hurry?”
Since I have no children of my own, I’m usually the one getting in the way and holding things up for all those who do have children and are in a hurry. I’ve been given a ministry of annoyance to parents in a hurry!
Of course, I’m only not in a hurry when my own interests are not at stake. Take for example when I was in an airport and rudely stepped ahead of a mom and her baby as she was trying to get everything pulled out to go through the security scanners.
Instead of offering to help, my flesh pushed everyone aside and focused on the great important me! Of course, has God showed me the way back into rest, I forgot to take out my gels and liquids, was pulled aside to get a baggage check, and the plane was delayed by an hour anyway, and all this just coming from a ‘spiritual’ retreat.
Good thing I still didn’t have my name tag on. Or maybe I should have had it on and changed it to say ‘Abiding only when convenient for the flesh!’
Jesus is not in a hurry.
He is never early, never late. He moves in the fullness of time in each day, in each situation, in each life. He’s never out of breath from running ahead or passed out from dragging behind.
His fruit is never green, never rotten, it is always just ripe! As we move and rest in Him, time becomes a servant to His work in us.
In this earthly realm, we think time is constant. Twenty-four hours is twenty-four hours. But this is not reality.
The faster we go, the slower time goes. The slower we go, the faster time goes. Time and motion are inversely related to each other and are not fixed constants.
This is why time really does go slower when we are younger and moving faster, and time goes faster when are older and moving slower. It’s not our imagination!
Light is the only thing that is constant, and at the speed of light time stands still. This is called the theory of relativity, but it is actually the reality of eternity.
Jesus is the Light, and in Him, time not only stands still, it is no more!
This relationship between time, motion, and speed was the concept behind the movie ‘Back to the Future’. Once the main character was able to go beyond the speed of light, he started traveling backwards in time.
Yet, in the Light of eternity, there is no beginning (backwards), and there is no end (forward) in time. So it is as we rest and abide in Christ, we stand in eternity and look over the past and the future as one seamless reality and we don’t even need a flux capacitor!
In the realm of earthly time in which we still exist, we can use the reality of eternity to our advantage. Stay a couple extra days when you stop to be refreshed at a well and are passing through a Samaria, wait a few extra days before you go back to the tomb of a Lazarus.
Enjoy moving at the speed of Light and standing still in Christ. We will recognize much more of God as the world moves in front of us instead of us frantically trying to keep up and move with it.
In his collection of ‘The Green Letters’ Miles Stanford writes this, “God does not hurry in His development of our Christian life. He is working from and for eternity. Many feel they are not making progress unless they are swiftly and constantly forging ahead. But this will not continue if there is to be healthy growth and ultimate maturity. God Himself will modify the pace. When God wants to make an oak, He takes a hundred years, but when He wants to make a squash, He takes six months. Growth is not a uniform thing in the tree or in the Christian. In some single months, there is more growth than in all the year besides. During the rest of the year, however, there is solidification, without which the green timber would be useless.” (RMZ 2016)
