We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing. We heap up wealth, not knowing who will spend it. (Psalm 39:6, NLT).
God has given us so much time. Time to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him, and to worship Him. Time to know others, to love others, to serve others, and to give to others. But how often we fill this divine time with busyness. Busyness is the common thread that runs throughout all of humanity. And sadly, in all of our hurrying, we rarely get anywhere.
Someone once asked writer and professor, Mark Buchanan, what was his biggest regret in life. He thought for a moment and said, "Being in a hurry".
"Being in a hurry," he said. "Getting to the next thing without fully entering the thing in front of me. I cannot think of a single advantage I've ever gained from being in a hurry. But a thousand broken and missed things, tens of thousands, lie in the wake of all that rushing."
"Through all that haste," he said, "I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away."
In our busyness and rushing, we fail to really live life. In an attempt to make time or gain time, we waste it. The busyness puts us out of touch with family, friends, and the relationships that really matter. The hurry causes us pain, unnecessary hospital visits, and stress beyond measure. We were not created to endure such stress.
While we race to obtain more, to be more, to see more, to experience more, we fill our lives with stuff --- doings and happenings and goings-on --- but somehow we come up short in the end. The trail seems longer the faster we run. The minutes keep ticking the longer we count. The more we fill, the more we leak until we ultimately run dry.
In a world with deals to make, ideas to put into action, promises to fulfill, people to take care of, and always work to do, who actually lives in the moment? Who knows how to do that or even where to begin? David says it right. We move quickly but are just shadows and all that we are doing ultimately ends in nothing. We fight for things --- money, power, prestige, recognition, pleasure, fame --- that we cannot take with us into eternity. We leave it all behind at the end of our lives.
God urges us to stop the race, to quit fighting against time, to call a time-out, to slow down, to be still, to sit quietly, and to realize that He is God. The urgency of life is really a reverse call to take the minutes we are hurrying and to stop, to listen to the music, to dance with grace, and to embrace the symphony of a peaceful, contented life. In Christ, we find time, not running out, but gaining more and more until that precious day. In ourselves, there is not enough time. But in Christ, we have all the time we need.
We can take A.W. Tozer's advice: "God never hurries. There are no deadlines against which he must work. Only to know this is to quiet our spirits and relax our nerves."
We can ponder Michael Phillips' thought: "The best things are never arrived at in haste. God is in no hurry; His plans are never rushed."
So there is no need to be in a hurry or to be so busy that we don't feel the grace that carries us and guides our lives. There is more than enough time to breathe, to laugh, to love, to experience goodness, to embrace grace, and to express gratitude to God for the gift of time and the ability to use it in this very moment of life.
Lord, in the midst of our busy lives, help us to slow down, to sit down, to stop. Help us to push away from the pursuit of more stuff and to pull closer to the pursuit of Your glory. Let us never be in such a hurry or so busy that we fail to really live life the way You intended --- abundant, free, and blessed. Let our lives be reflections of Your grace and goodness working in us and through us and let it shine on our faces. In Jesus' name. Amen.
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