Hurry!

            Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6:12)

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. (Psalm 46:10-11)

 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

          After you’ve been driving on a highway, even for a short time, don’t you find slowing down to a city’s speed limits a pain? I was concerned that driving from Florida to Pennsylvania last week would be a “Mad Max” situation, but the only real problems were the construction and near-city reductions of speed, especially down to 55 or 45. It doesn’t help that others were still doing 60 or 70 while I was trying to keep it within 5 mph of the limit. This need to continue at the higher speed is known as velocitization. We feel driven to go faster, to hurry.

          Last spring, the first time I went to Presque Isle State Park, I found myself gritting my teeth. Each time I stopped at the places I stop for pictures. Something inside of me said, “Go. Go! Get back in the truck and move.” My time at home wasn’t much better. I needed to clear out the attic, the garage, and the basement. I needed to put in the gardens. I needed to get the house reconfigured for my use.

          This spring feels a little the same. I spent two days on the road, pushing to get home because going home means getting there. I’d thought of taking a little longer and sightsee, but COVID-19, and “the horse smelled the barn.” The trip velocitized me. I feel driven to do, do, do. And as I look at all I need to do, should do, and want to do (the last category has the most item) it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

          This drive is what I’m going to call “hurry.” There are times when we need to hurry, to move fast. I the house is on fire, by all means, hurry to get out. There are things we need to make a priority and get done. Those things aren’t what I mean by hurry in this case. I’m not even talking about my penchant to multi-task by doing a plastic canvas project while walking the dog (and carrying my camera in case I see something to photograph, and carrying a garbage bag or picking up other people’s trash.) What I’m describing is a consuming addiction to the stress and a need to go, go, go and do, do, do that at the end of the day, no matter how much you did, says, “Failure!” It’s an attitude of hurry.

          Hurry isn’t just an individual problem. Our society has the same problem. If our government doesn’t solve our problems within hours of our discovering that we have them, in a way we approve, that causes us only minor inconvenience but causes those whom we hate great inconvenience we want to throw those useless, hated politicians through a skyscraper window. If the whole world doesn’t rush out to buy a product the way people are buying toilet paper right now, a corporation eliminates the product. At least part of our society seems to worship change. Their response to everything is “don’t just stand there, do something.” It doesn’t matter what we do, as long as we’re compulsively trying solution after solution in hopes that we’ll find the one thing that will make everything all better.

          After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, a priest named Robert Sirico wrote about wanting desperately to hurry down to that island and do something. It took great discipline on his part to stop to observe the situation long enough to figure out what the most useful and effective something was.

          This sort of hurry was not in yesterday’s list of emotions, but it is a great example of the principle. Can you see how this attitude of hurry pulls a person away from God? Hurry is a cruel god that demands that you give up more than a cursory attendance on God. There’s too much to do. You don’t have time to study the Bible, or pray, or stand and watch to see the salvation God brings.

          This morning in a discussion on another subject, I wrote to someone about rip tides. They pull you out to sea, and trying to swim toward shore doesn’t work. The only hope is to swim across the current. Of course, our automatic response is to swim against the current. Hurry is like that. The more you struggle against it, the more you are hurrying. The solution isn’t to stop doing anything. It’s not to work harder.

          I suspect that in every case, the solution is to turn back to God or to repent and obey. It takes time to hear and act on what God tells us. In terms of the armor of God, I don’t think there’s ever a time in which we don’t need to use all of them, but the helmet of salvation and the shield of faith seem especially useful. We need to remember that working harder won’t produce salvation for us. We need to trust that God is going to lead us where we need to go, and that He won’t let what needs to happen pass undone. It may help us to set a time limit and deliberately dawdle, to reset that speed control. In terms of the fruit of the Spirit, the keys may be joy, peace, and patience. We need to be still and know that He is God, not the voice that says, “Go, go, go. Do, do, do.”