Always In A Hurry by Kim Reisman

Scripture Focus:

I will thank you, Lord, among all the people. I will sing your praises among the nations. For your unfailing love is higher than the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.

Psalm 108:3-4 (NLT)

You are my rock and my fortress. For the honor of your name, lead me out of this danger. Pull me from the trap my enemies set for me, for I find protection in you alone. I entrust my spirit into your hand. Rescue me, Lord, for you are a faithful God.

Psalm 31:3-5 (NLT)

United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Great Britain Prime Minister Winston Churchill were at the Yalta Conference with Joseph Stalin from Russia in 1945, trying to settle issues between nations following World War II. When Roosevelt said that he hoped that the conference would only last five or six days, Churchill responded, “I do not see any way of realizing our hopes about world organization in five or six days. Even the Almighty took seven.”

One of our biggest problems is that we’re always in a hurry. We live in a fast-food, quick-fix, instant-replay world. The amazing advancements in technology have dramatically improved our lives, yet we can’t wait even a couple of seconds for the video to load or our computer to boot up. It reminds me of the story of a man who prayed earnestly one morning for grace to overcome his impatience. A little later, he missed his train by half a minute and spent an hour stomping up and down the station platform in furious irritation. Five minutes before the next train arrived, he suddenly realized that his prayer had been answered! He had been given an hour to practice the virtue of patience but had missed the opportunity and wasted the hour fuming.

The fruit of the Spirit, especially patience, can’t grow if we’re always in a hurry. This fruit of the Spirit, Christian patience, is dependent upon our belief in a sovereign God who is in control, who is at work in the world, and who will not forget any one of us. The psalmist sang about this in our Scripture passages for today. But not only in the Psalms, the witness is throughout the Bible: Our sovereign God is in control. God is at work in the world and will not forget any one of us. The prophet Isaiah put it this way, in one of the most haunting words in the Old Testament’s record of God speaking of his people:

Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands. Isaiah 49:15-16 (NLT)

We demonstrate our impatience most irreverently when we question God’s timetable. How often and in how many ways does it happen? We expect God to act now. When we don’t perceive signs of God’s acting, we give up looking for God’s activity in our life; even specific answers to prayer go unnoticed.

We also show the limitation of our patience when we’re impatient with another person’s weaknesses. This is one of our most glaring failures. We’re quick to see the “speck” in another’s eye and disregard the “beam” in our own. An antidote for this is to constantly remind ourselves of God’s patience with us. Psalm 92 reminds us that it is good “to declare [God’s] steadfast love in the morning” (v2). If we keep reminding ourselves that God is committed to us, that our welfare is close to God’s heart and that God will not withhold or even modify one single promise, then we can show patience with another person’s weakness. If God is patient with us, constant in lovingkindness, we certainly owe the same to others.

Finally, when we’re in a hurry, we can’t pray. Prayer demands time, attention, silence, waiting. When we’re in a hurry, we miss much of the beauty and meaning of life. In “Infirmity” the poet Theodore Roethke talks about seeing in a different way: “the deep eye sees the shimmer on the stone.” If we’re in a hurry we miss that – not only the shimmer on the stone, but also the glimmer on the grass, the yellow-breasted finch, first violets of spring, the beauty of the weeks, the dancing shadows of wind-motioned pines.

Roethke makes another suggestive statement in “What Can I Tell My Bones.” He says, “I recover my tenderness by long looking.” Impatience blocks us from tenderness because there can be no long looking if we’re always in a hurry.

As you fast and pray this week, reflect on several questions. Have there been occasions recently when you have been impatient with God?

Are there people in your life that you are impatient with because of their weakness? How do you think God might want you to change in relation to those people?

How about your prayer life? Do you have difficulty giving God your focused attention in prayer?

I pray that you would begin to cultivate a “deep eye” and “long looking,” remembering that you are written on the palm of God’s hand – he will never forget you.