“Time given to inner renewal is never wasted. God is not in a hurry.” –Henri Nouwen

In his book Three Mile an Hour God, Kosuke Koyama says this: “Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.” I love that. God walks with us at the speed of love.

Our modern lives run insanely fast. Even if we’re retired, the relentless onslaught of media alone is enough to drain our stamina and exhaust us. But in the midst of the clamor and demands of the world—even the good demands of work and relationships—God walks with us slowly, imparting the love and renewal we need, at the speed of love. The invitation to us is to slow down, take a breath, and become aware of it. Dallas Willard famously said that “Hurry is the great enemy of the spiritual life. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life,” and John Mark Comer took those words seriously enough to write an entire book about it: The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy. Ask God if either Koyama’s or Comer’s book could be a good early summer read for you.

Might the idea of increasing your emotional health, of carving out time for inner renewal, of just quieting the inner voice that is constantly urging you to do more, achieve more, accomplish more, resonate with you right now? If so, please hear that as God’s invitation to begin throttling down to match God’s steady, faithful pace of love that is already walking with you. As we begin the long season of Ordinary Time, can we choose some deliberate slowing? If you’d like to talk about it a bit more, please email at lori@flccs.net and we’ll get a coffee and have a nice, slow, relaxed conversation about it. God is not in a hurry. Let’s walk together with God, slowly, at the speed of love.