Stop waiting until you finish school,
until you go back to school,
until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds,
until you have kids, until your kids leave the house,
until you start work, until you retire,
until you get married, until you get divorced,
until Friday night, until Sunday morning,
until you get a new car or home,
until your car or home is paid off,
until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter,
until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on,
until you've had a drink, until you've sobered up,
until you die, until you are born again
to decide that there is no better time
than right now to be happy.
Bet you've punched it. Stabbed it. Jabbed it. Jiggled it. Wiggled it.
The DOOR CLOSE button.
On an elevator.
Might as well admit it. You've pushed it. You pushed it when you were feeling anxious, stressed and strained, when your Type-A personality traits were rising to the surface, when your impatience, competitiveness, aggressiveness grew like thunderstorms skittering across the Weather Channel’s radar screen.
The DOOR CLOSE button
.Type-A personalities have a whole subset of diseases that they, and only they, share. But how do these distinctive diseases spread? One point of transmission for these diseases is the DOOR CLOSE button on elevators that only gets pushed by "can't-stand-to-wait-a-nanosecond-longer" people!
I was on the elevator at work. Just as the door was about to close, a couple of cleaners stepped on and pushed the sixth floor button. Since the elevator's closing timing cycle had just been interrupted, the doors hung back waiting to see if any others would arrive. One of the guys couldn’t wait and began pushing the DOOR CLOSE button again and again and again and again and with so much pressure that his finger was turning white. Then as the elevator began moving he then went on to push again the sixth floor button over and over again as if pushing it would make the elevator go faster.
Impatience begins while waiting for the elevator to arrive. Manufacturers such as Otis Elevator know that a good waiting time is in the neighborhood of 15 seconds, because at around 40 seconds people start to get visibly upset. Once on board, elevator antsiness only intensifies while waiting for the door to close. How long do you think you generally have to wait?
Twenty seconds? Ten seconds? Five seconds? Two seconds?
The answer is: only two to four seconds, which doesn't sound like much, but feels - for some of us - like a very long time.
The DOOR CLOSE button gets used more than any other button in the elevator.
In Mark 6:31 Jesus says:” Let’s get away from the crowds for a while and rest.” For so many people were coming and going that they scarcely had time to eat.
He knows that, ironically, the DOOR CLOSE button has been disabled, a common practice by building managers who fear trapped limbs and lawsuits. The button is a dummy, a piece of exercise equipment for anxious fingers. Jesus understands that faster is slower; that haste is waste; that stress is mess.
In our culture, we find it difficult to wait. In real-time stock trading, your broker executes your order quickly, maybe so quickly that you don't have to wait for a callback. In cities, road crews are tearing up highways and adding lanes to provide mere minutes of extra time. In the computer industry, software product cycles have begun to evaporate - instead of distinct, tested, shrink-wrapped versions of software, manufacturers distribute upgrades and patches that keep changing. The pizza place promises delivery within 30 minutes (or the pizza is free). Bill Gates is doing business@the speed of thought. Citibank's 15-minute mortgage approval and countless other products and services have made speed a new commodity. Oddly enough, the more we fill our lives with timesaving devices and timesaving strategies, the more rushed we feel.
Into our ever-accelerating, fast and fluid world, Jesus says, "Come ye yourselves apart to a desert place and rest a while" (Mark 6:31). According to Scripture, the first followers of Jesus were an awful lot like us - coming and going, with no chance even to sit back and grab a bite! So they escape by boat to a deserted place.
Jesus knows something that we today are only beginning to understand: Decomposition takes time. The making of good, rich, life-giving compost, for example, takes time. You can't hurry compost for the same reason you can't hurry love and you can't hurry a soufflé. The biochemistry has its own inherent pace.
Likewise, grandchildren take time, learning a language takes time, the testing of new drugs takes time, and vacations that really enable us to rest, relax and recreate take time. You can't push a DOOR CLOSE button and speed up any of these important activities. You might as well try to teach cats to swim.
Resting a while is not simply a lifestyle option - it is critical for living in a hyper speed, ramped-up world. We need to get back to the Old English meaning of "speed," which was success and prosperity, not velocity. After all, "Godspeed" doesn't mean "God hustle you along," it means "God grant you a successful and prosperous journey." Becoming fertile, rich and mature - in other words, "decomposing" - takes time.
Too many people are under so much stress that it’s killing them, and part of the reason is because we’re a society that is driven to do things, have things and go places. How often do we hear the phrase: “I’ve got things to do and places to go….”?
Our society pushes us to work nonstop, 24-7 Employers give us notebook computers so that we can work at home and on vacation and offer no rewards for carving out time to decompose a day a week.
Is this a slam -dunk on speed and a lecture against high-tech productivity?
Not at all.
Working in real time or hyper speed isn't wrong or bad - in fact, it's an essential element of success in the Information Age. Jesus himself was ahead of his time as a master multi-tasker, and his days were compressed with compassion. Nor is this a call to a over-analyzing lifestyle, but an appeal for limits on the labors we all try to cram into every nanosecond of every week.
How can we live a balanced life?
We need to work, and we should work hard, but is that second job worth it – or the extra non-paid hours we put in at work to maybe get the promotion in the end with yet more work and responsibilities? I don’t think God want us to live like that. He wants us to be led by His spirit – that we follow that peaceful, still small voice inside us rather than following the demands and expectations of what our flesh – or someone else’s flesh – wants, thinks and feels. We are going to have to learn to say no to some things that we may be saying yes to right now. To live in the peace and joy that Jesus died to give us we are going to have to prune our lives regularly.
Just imagine the gardener who takes care of fruit trees. He regularly checks out the trees in the orchard so see how much fruit they are producing and what kind of fruit. Is the fruit healthy? Are there dead or withered branches that needs to be pruned.
In the same way God watches over us – His “trees of life”. He points out things we are involved in that are “dead” or deforming our shape. These are the things He wants us to prune from our lives. How do we know if God wants us to stop doing something? When something regularly steels our peace and joy, bringing frustration, aggravation and confusion we need to prune it.
So what to cut out?
Well, you could for example begin with leaving your pager at work, turn off the cell phone, leave work on time, cut out shop-talk after hours, get an unlisted second phone for family and friends only and unplug the phone with the listed number so “work” can’t get a hold of you outside office hours.
Observe the Sabbath.
In Exodus 20:8-11 it says: “Remember to observe the Sabbath as a holy day. Six days a week is for your daily duties and your regular work, but the seventh day is a day of Sabbath rest before the Lord your God. On that day you are to do no work of any kind, nor shall your son, daughter or slaves – whether men or women- or your cattle or your house guests.”
Because of Christ’s finished work we are no longer under the law as the people living in Old Testament times, but there is a spiritual principle of rest God established that we should not overlook. It is essential that we have regular times of rest. The Sabbath principle is built into our physical bodies. If you have ever done any long distance running one of the training principles is that a runner becomes faster by taking a day off from training each week.
In Mark 2:27 Jesus said: “The Sabbath was made on account and for the sake of man, not man for the Sabbath.”
I’m sure God knew that man would have a tendency to go without resting in order to increase productivity. If we don’t rest regularly we become tired and this affects every part of us – spirit soul and body. We are too tired to want to pray or study the Word and it becomes hard to hear from God. We don’t handle difficult situations well – it’s easier to get negative and everything tends to overwhelm and defeat us. Being tired stifles creativity and productivity and we may spiral downward into depression and spiritual death – burnout!
The quality of what we do isn’t very good if we’re worn out when we do it. It’s not how much we do – it’s the quality of what we do that makes the difference.
Make some adjustments and some changes in your lives. A good nights sleep prepares you for the day ahead and one day off in seven prepares you for the coming week. I don’t think the day off has to be a particular day, but I do believe it has to be regular and one day out of seven. On that day we should rest and build our relationship with God and others – especially with our family.
Sabbath is a reminder that we - both children and adults - are more than beasts of burden, more than cogs in a wheel, more than students or workers who are valued for our contributions. On our day of rest, we discover we are valuable simply because we exist.
It's a place to be at ease, to become rich and fertile and mature. It is a place of Sabbath-keeping and rest, renewal and relaxation, silence and inspiration. The deserted place is where the DOOR CLOSE button is always disconnected. Take time to enjoy what God has given you. Spend time with your children, enjoy the sunset with a friend, enjoy doing nothing. Enjoy the life God has given you. But don't worry: The demands of the villages and cities and farms will always be waiting for you, as they were for Jesus. It doesn't take long for people to find you and cry out to you and place assignments before you and expect you to work miracles ... in real time, right now! But returning from the deserted place, you'll find yourself full of serenity, strangely stronger and ready to roll up your sleeves and do good work.
You'll get the job done, whether it's healing or high-tech hardware repair. And after your time away, you'll probably do it patiently and peacefully, with several seconds to spare.
AMEN
Slow Me Down Lord
(Excerpt: ©Kellie A. Maloney)Show me the way,
open my eyes
so I can see the beauty
in all of your creation...But most of all Lord,
slow me down
so I may know why I came
and where I'm going;
so that my time on earth
will not be in vain.
Anne Jorgensen
September 12, 2004