12 February 2023
Eugene Petersen translates Jesus’ words in Matthew 11v28 in this way: Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
This Sunday we are reflecting on not being in a hurry. Not forcing things. Adapting to walking at the pace of God’s Spirit.
Kosuke Koyama, in a book titled “The 3 mile an hour God” says this, God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is “slow” yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love.” *
I think of Jesus – rarely in a hurry, stopping often, retiring to pray or even sleeping in a storm! You might not use the word relaxed, but at the very least he was not pressured by people to be what he was not.
Why do we hurry? I would suggest it’s because we have internalised an external pressure from our inner voice and from the voices around us.
I know for myself that it is when I hurry that I miss things or get appointment times wrong or misread an instruction. My wife has to remind me to slow down and, in the words of one psychologist be “a non-anxious presence”.
As we enter this season in the run up to Easter, perhaps we are being called to pause and to repent of our hurry sickness. And even as we get closer to Easter Sunday to not skip to the happy ending, but to pause, to notice and deeply reflect on the man of Sorrows as he heads towards the cross.
May God help us to be a people who “learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”
Source: Three Mile an Hour God, Orbis, 1980, p.7.
Julian Holdsworth
BSBC Pastor
