In 1967, experts on time management delivered a report to the U.S. Senate. These experts believed the speed of technology, satellites and robotics would present a big problem for the American workplace in the years to come. The problem? People would have too much free time. Here’s what they concluded:
“By 1985, people might have to choose between working 22 hours a week, 27 weeks a year or retiring at 38.”
Good call, “experts.” If I had a time machine, I would fire all of you.
Almost 50 years later, we’re moving faster than ever. We’re addicted to speed, obsessed with hurry. This addiction now has a name … ”hurry sickness.”
Hurry sickness is defined as “a continuous struggle to accomplish more things and participate in more events in less time, frequently in the face of opposition, real or imagined, from other people.”
If you’ve ever laid on the horn because the person in front of you didn’t turn fast enough, switched lanes to avoid slow drivers, or changed lanes at the grocery store because another lane had fewer people, you might suffer with hurry sickness.
Our pace is out of control. And, if we compare our pace to the pace of Jesus’ life, there aren’t many similarities. Jesus was never rushed. He didn’t cater to the demands of the world. He wasn’t overwhelmed by life, even though he had an enormous mission to complete in a very short period of time.
Jesus never rushed because he moved at God’s pace. You see, hurry isn’t from God. It’s the world’s pace. It’s Satan’s pace. Psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “Hurry is not OF the devil. Hurry IS the devil.”
Culture’s obsession with busyness and hurriedness isn’t just a scheduling problem. It’s a heart problem. It’s time to consider what a hurried life is costing us.
And, make no mistake, the cost is enormous.
Here are seven consequences of living a hurried life.
1.) A hurried life destroys your relationship with God.
Wing Mandao, a Chinese pastor, said, “We have so much to do that we never really commune with God as he intended in the Garden of Eden.”
Intimacy with God requires stillness, attentiveness and silence. You must get off life’s busy freeway to grow closer to God.
Jesus frequently removed himself from the world. He spent time alone in prayer and solitude. And in these moments, Jesus received the strength to fulfill his mission, the confidence to continue his mission, and the wisdom to discern the ways of God from the ways of the world.
Unless you spend extended periods of time alone with God through prayer, solitude and sabbath, the speed of the world will skew your understanding of God. Anxiety, unrest and discontentment will hover over your life like a dark storm cloud.
As Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.”
