| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “How to inhabit time” Our Bible verse for today: “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.” Lamentations 3:25 (NKJV) Our thought for today: “Slow-down and let your soul catch up” The story is told of the missionary doctor who arrived in Africa eager to get to the interior of the continent to begin his work. When he got off the ship at the coast, he hired a group of native men to transport his large amount of luggage and supplies for him. Then, very early the next morning he set off at a fast pace to begin the long trek inland. All day he pushed and pushed at a fast pace, not letting up, not wanting to stop. Finally, when the workers were exhausted and couldn’t go any further, they stopped for the night. Early the next morning the missionary was up again and eager to get going, but the native men refused to budge. In exasperation the missionary demanded to know why. Finally, one of the men explained, “We’re waiting for our souls to catch up with our bodies”. And he meant it. The men sincerely thought that they had traveled so far and so fast the previous day that their souls had been unable to keep up, so now they needed to wait for their souls to catch up with them. That sounds like us. We rush and rush, push and push, go faster and further so we can do more, and our souls can’t keep up. Kosuke Koyama was a Japanese Christian theologian and philosopher who once wrote a wonderful little book with the title “Three Mile an Hour God”. It was based on the premise that the average human being walks at approximately three miles an hour. That’s a steady but relaxed and reasonable pace for most of us. It gets us where we need to go without exhausting us in the process. Koyama argues that this an apt metaphor for the pace at which we should live our lives, and it’s the pace at which God attempts to regulate us. Many scriptures support the understanding that God doesn’t want us rushing through life (Jesus was never in a hurry). When we do rush, we’re getting ahead of God Himself. Instead, God walks through life with us at a pace that makes sense and at which we can truly savor and enjoy the moments of life. This is one of the reasons that at this season in life I have switched from jogging and running to walking and hiking. Walking and hiking are not only good forms of exercise (and they easier on these sixty-eight-year-old knee joints), but walking enables me to better appreciate my surroundings, and it’s also a good reminder to slow down the rest of my life too. Are you rushing through life so fast that you need to slow down and let your soul catch up? God is a three-mile-an-hour God (not because He can’t go faster, but because we shouldn’t). I encourage you to slow down and let your soul catch up! God bless, Pastor Jim |
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