Clay in the Hands

Have you ever had the blessing of watching God move?  I have to admit, the visible evidence of the invisible occurs all too rarely in my life.  And while I am confessing, I know that the rarity of its occurrence is not an absence of God moving but rather an absence of presence on my part.  God is at work all around us every minute of every day – we just rarely slow down and pay attention.

I am working through a book right now entitled, When It’s Rush Hour All Day Long, by John Tadlock.  In the book, the author refers to the reason we live at such break-neck speed as “hurry sickness.”  He even offers a quiz to see if the reader suffers from hurry sickness.  Unfortunately, he does not offer a scale of determining just how deeply the reader suffers from the ailment.  I am afraid if he did, he would have to re-calibrate it after I took the quiz.  One of the questions in the quiz is something like – do you count the people in each line at the check out and estimate how many items they have in their carts in order to gauge the speed of the process and then choose the line based on your best estimate?  As I read that question, I found myself wondering – “Who doesn’t do that?”  But then the next question hit a little closer to home – do you keep tabs of the other lines as you are waiting to determine who is winning?

Guilty.

Now I will say, not once in my life have I finished before the other lines and walked by them and yelled – “LOOSER!!”  Alright, maybe I have thought it – but I have never said it out loud.

We all suffer from hurry sickness in our culture.  In fact, if it were really a disease, I believe it would be considered a national epidemic.

What has become normal pace for us leaves little time to see God at work.  We don’t even take time to process the things we realize are occurring around us.  We just shrug things off and move on with little thought.  How will we ever see the movement of the invisible?

The first step is to realize you must slow down.  God did not create us to live at such a pace.  In fact, Genesis records that when God was in the process of creating the world, the seventh day was set aside for rest.  Did God get tired creating the world?  No – I don’t believe that was the reason God rested.  God set a precedent.  God created us to need rest so God created Sabbath – rest – cessation from work.

This seems like an odd topic to discuss on a Monday.  We are just getting started on a new week in which we have a full schedule and plenty to do.  But God created us for relationship.  When we get so wrapped up in our schedule – our To Do list – our world – we forget to look for God.  We fail to see God at work all around us.  We miss the blessing.  We miss the fulfillment we are seeking desperately.

Stop!

Slow down!

God is at work!

Just look!