Monday June 17, 2013

Dealing with it...

 

"Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord." -Psalm 27:14

Jesus was unhurried, wasn't He? He never seemed to be in a hurry except when He went to the cross. That was it.

When Jesus was called to heal Jairus' daughter, and He encounters all these distractions on the way, He sees God in the distractions. Then He gets to Jairus' daughter and she's dead because He took too long. So He just raises her from the dead. The same thing with Lazarus. Jesus actually finds out about Lazarus and decides to do nothing (John chapter 11). He wants to wait for Lazarus to die so that He can raise him from the dead.

And of course, Jesus, throughout His life, is unhurried because God is unhurried. They're eternal beings who live in a different reality. They're not afraid of things like death or not accomplishing their goals. They live in a completely different reality. Jesus lived, and so should His disciples live, from a place of humility, listening, and an unhurried posture.

The sense of hurry that I normally live out of, and many of us live out of, often comes from either a place of pride or a place of fear. Sometimes when we create space for the Lord of silence or solitude, we have to face our inner demons, we have to face our struggles, our loneliness, our feelings of lack of meaning or fulfillment, and then we have to deal with them. So typically, instead of dealing with them, we just go back and hurry again, and get productive.

However, I don't believe that's what the Lord wants from us. Maybe He actually wants to teach us in those moments that he would rather we slow down so we can live the life he has planned for us.

Prayer: Dear Lord, I want to live the life you have planned for me. Show me the way to live the unhurried life. Amen.

Reflection: What do you think the Lord has planned for you once you slow down and take more time to listen to him?