One day recently I got into my car and turned to drive up the road outside our house in Guernsey and surprisingly joined a queue of cars that appeared to be waiting for something large and slow to come down the hill. After a few minutes of gulping in fumes and fighting my own frustration, down the hill with a gentle clip-clop came the wonderful spectacle of a horse and buggy, with two amiable older gentlemen chatting to one another. Behind them a long line of approaching cars and vans was being forced to slow down and proceed at nineteenth century speed! I feared the worst and thought that someone was going to start sounding their horn, perhaps scaring the poor horse, but I was in for a surprise.
As the procession passed me I wound down my window and switched off my engine just to appreciate the moment more fully. The sweet sound of the horse’s clopping and the gentle rumble of the cartwheels filled my car, together with the friendly banter of the men. For a few seconds I was transported to an earlier quieter age. It was a precious moment of sanity. When I restarted my car and moved on past the approaching line-up of cart-followers, my expectation of angry and frustrated fellow drivers was dispersed. All I got was smiles and kindly looks, with people pointing forward at the lovely anachronism that was hindering their progress. It was as if the apparition from yesteryear was healing something in our crazily hurried culture. It had sutured a wound caused by all our rushing about, even if just for a few moments.
In John Mark Comer’s excellent book ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’ he points out that Jesus and his band of followers only ever moved about at walking pace and yet they achieved so much in such a short space of time. Jesus also built times of solitude and prayer into his routine and his journeys around first century Israel, often rising before dawn to pray. Perhaps we were never designed to dash about like we do, driven more by deadlines, demands and diesel than by love, hope and peace! Is it realistic to ask us to slow down though? How will we get our work done? We are not ungrateful for the technology that enables us to get through our days, but the gadgets and tools that we once thought would give us more time have actually stolen it like scammers syphoning away our spiritual savings. We may be rich in technological resources, but we have become poorer in spirit.
Two women in the New Testament illustrate this well. One of them was dashing around her kitchen just when Jesus called to have a chat with her and her sister. Martha is described as being ‘distracted by all the preparations that had to be made’ (Luke 10) whereas her sister Mary found space to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to what he had to say. When the over-busy Matha moaned to the Lord about her sister not pulling her weight, Jesus chastised her for being worried and upset about many things and reminded her that Mary had chosen what is better – she had elected to be in listening mode. This has to be a choice and takes effort. Finding time for a place of quiet and fellowship with Christ can be restorative and refreshing but is something we need to prioritise if it is to happen at all.
Maybe we all need to wind down our window and switch off our engine from time to time and adopt the listening mode exemplified by Mary. Without it, the hurry wasp will have us swatting the air and dashing about like mad things, perhaps doing plenty but achieving little of lasting value.
