Someone asked Mark Buchanan the question many ask. “What’s your biggest regret in life?”His answer…being in a hurry.
He explained,
“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, I thought I was making up time. It turns out I was throwing it away. The Chinese join two characters to form a single pictograph for busyness: heart and killing. That is stunningly incisive. The heart is the place the busy life exacts its steepest toll.”
We have turned into adrenaline junkies, pushing from one thing to another. Red lights and slow cars irritate us. Who has not wondered why they are waiting in a Walmart line when 10 checkout counters are vacant?
The 21st century’s mascot is the white rabbit from Louis Carroll’s allegory, Alice in Wonderland. He hurries through life, saying, “I’m late.”
Hurry gains nothing, except pain. Even Jesus refused to hurry. Upon hearing the news of the illness of his friend Lazarus, Jesus refused to hurry. He knew life lived in God’s rhythms and was content to follow the ebb and flow of life.
Solomon observed,
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
God gives us time for what we need to do. Hurry stems from not believing that. Trim schedules.
Set priorities. There is time for the essential but never enough time for the trivial.Slow down and don’t have “hurry” as your regret.
-Robert G. Taylor-
