Hurry!
Anybody feel stressed lately? Hurried? Scurried? Anybody need more joy in the midst of your spinning world?
We pack so much into our schedules and are obsessed with going faster and multi-tasking even more. It is the Christmas season, so I am pretty sure everyone will agree with me on this. : )
We have “Federal Express” for mail, “Sprint” phone service, “Quick books” for our checkbooks, “Slim fast” For diets, McDonalds for fast food, made faster by “drive-thru’s”—and don’t even think of spelling through correctly—it just takes too much time—shorten it to “thru.” “Speedos” are the fastest swimsuits. We look for the shortest line in the grocery store and get frustrated when we get the longer lasting line. Dominos became the #1 pizza delivery because they promised to deliver in 30 minutes or less.
What is “hurry?” Dictionaries use phrases such as “Excessive haste,” “a recurrent agitation of sound,” “a state of eagerness or urgency.” In its verb form: “to carry or cause to go with haste,” “to impel to greater speed, or prod,” “to perform with undue hast.” “Hurry is associated with words such as: hurl, “Hurry-scurry,” “hurdle,” “hurly-burly”, <meaning uproar or tumult>, “hurrah” and “hurricane.” You can almost feel it!
You could say hurry is a state of frantic effort one falls into in response to inadequacy, fear and guilt.
I really enjoy Dallas Willard and I will paraphrase what I’ve heard him say…We should take as our aim to live lives entirely without hurry. The peace and joy and strength which God intended for human life, the well-being and health of mind and body, is inconsistent with living in a hurry. (Of course occasional bouts of hurry may be reasonable in such a world as this. But chronic hurry is not.)
The simple essence of hurry is: Too much to do! The good of avoiding hurry is not just pleasure, but to enable us to calmly and effectively do the things that are truly important with strength and joy. We must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives. It is an enemy of the spiritual life. We don’t want to “skim” our lives. We want to live them.
I have heard Dallas Willard say that in order to get the “urgent” off of our backs, we must:
Form a clear intention to live without hurry. Try one day.
- Cultivate a mental picture of your place in the world before God: what is God doing and where do you fit in? Write it down. ON the basis of that:
- Begin to eliminate things you “have” to do. (Choose to do less better.) For example, do you really need to spend as much time on Facebook and email as you do?. Don’t be afraid of doing nothing.
I just thought this was worth sharing in this hectic end of year time. I know I need to re-read this myself!
Bless you Big!
Thora
