Apr 26, 2019
Reprinted from the Sabbath Recorder, June 2016.
Sharing the journey,
Pastor Scott Hausrath
SDB Church, North Loup, NE
I would like to share with you this thought:
Let’s not miss the now by worrying about the next.
This thought was prompted by my reading of James Bryan Smith’s book “The Good and Beautiful God.” One of the truths he shares is the idea of “hurry sickness,” which he labels as “the number one spiritual illness of our day.” The simple, and sad, truth is that we are so busy focusing on all the things we need to be doing, that we miss out on what we are doing. We’re not fully present in each moment, so we’re not fully experiencing life, which is a series of moments.
Smith puts it like this: “When hurried, we cannot experience life at its fullest; nor can we come into contact with our true selves, our real feelings. And even more important, we outrun God. When we slow down we allow ourselves to be found — found by life and found by God. When we practice slowing down, we are moving into the rhythm of God.”
Of course Jesus knows all about hurry sickness, because He knows all about humans. Perhaps that’s why He said to His followers, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
(Matthew 6:34)
Do you resonate with this idea of hurry sickness? Are you sick of missing the now, because you’re worrying about the next? One thing we can do in our process of eliminating hurry is to reduce our number of activities. Looking at your calendar for the next five days, is there one thing you can safely eliminate? After eliminating that one thing, don’t replace it with something else. Replace it with someOne else. Read your favorite chapter of scripture ten times through in one sitting — listen to what God is saying to you. Take a walk in God’s gorgeous creation — see what He’s showing you. Press “play” on your favorite worship music — hear what He’s singing to you. Be fully present with God, and He will be fully present with you.
The idea of “hurry sickness,” as described in James Bryan Smith’s book “The Good and Beautiful God,” is that we are so busy focusing on all the things we need to be doing, we miss out on what we are doing. We’re not fully present in each moment, so we’re not fully experiencing life, which is a series of moments. Does this describe you? Are you sick of missing the now because you’re worrying about the next?
Smith said that, “When we slow down we allow ourselves to be found, found by life and found by God.” How can we do this? How can we start slowing down, start eliminating hurry from our daily lives? We’ve already talked about decreasing the quantity of our activities. Now let’s talk about increasing the quality of our activities.
I’m not talking about replacing bad activities with good activities. After all, how often have you thought to yourself, “Instead of embezzling money from my boss, today I’ll be a faithful employee”? I’m talking about replacing good activities with great activities. Good activities are fun, entertaining, distracting. Great activities are informative, impacting, inspiring. Good activities seem to distract us from reality, whereas great activities seem to drive us deeper into reality. We tend to engage in so many good activities that we don’t have time for great activities. How can we replace the good with the great?
A better question might be this: How can we transform the good into the great? For example, watching a ball game on TV is a good activity. It helps us to relax (unless we’re in a fantasy league!) to recover from the stresses of the day. However, watching a ball game on TV with a friend is a great activity. Not only does it help us to recover from the stresses of the day, it also helps us to work through those stresses as we talk about our day with our friend. Watching a game alone might be fun, but watching with a friend might be fulfilling. There’s nothing wrong with fun, but why settle for fun when we can be fulfilled?
This is just one example of transforming the good into the great. Look at your own list of daily activities, and see which good ones you can transform into great ones. When we’re being fulfilled, we’re more likely to live in the now, instead of hurrying and worrying about the next.
