Friday, June 15, 2007
5:36 PM
Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. Hurry can destroy our souls and keep us from living well.For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith.It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.
We suffer from what has come to be known as "hurry sickness". One of the great illusions of our day is that hurrying will buy us more time.With the advance in technology,people would have more free time as they need to work lesshours.Ironically, it has not produced what we're after:a sense of having enough time.We often experience the opposite.While people in the advanced countries are rich in goods.,they are extremely poor in time.Many societies in the two-third world ,by contrast,are poor in material possessions,by our standards,but they are rich in time.They are not driven or hurried.They live with a sense that there is adequate time to do what needs to be done each day.Hurry will keep us consumed by the "cares and riches and pleasures of life",as Jesus put it,and prevented His way from taking root in our hearts. Jesus never suggested that it's wrong to be concerned about basic needs. He simply said it's unnecessary. When we appreciate how much God loves us, we are no longer feel pressure to run after even the necessities of life.
Lord help me to employ my time for you, not in frantic busyness, as if i've had something to prove, but in calm thankfulness for all you've given me, including the gift of time. Amen.
Jeffrey Tan was here.
