Slow Down, Look Around
By: Morgan Cooper
We have quieted the house and the jingle bells. We have stored away our beloved Christmas vinyl records, yet a few twinkle lights remain. We seem to tie the bow on the beauty of advent only to rush into resolutions. Yet, hope, peace, joy, and love remain our greatest need for quieting our noisy souls, regardless of the day on the calendar or the holiday being celebrated. As we both reflect on the past year and plan for the next, may we consider our pace to be more important than our productivity.
Over the last 5 years, I have learned that choosing a word for the year plays a powerful role in keeping me rooted and grounded in truth while giving theme and focus to the highs and lows of our days. From learning to read to learning to regulate, I’ve learned from my crew that being in a rush is always met with resistance. Like the change of seasons, God created us to operate in rhythms, with our pace an indicator of our health and habits. So take a deep breath with me… in and out. Let your shoulders relax away from your ears. Didn't that feel so good? And that, my friends, is why we chose SLOW for 2024.
Our minds and bodies are moving farther and faster than ever today, but the most significant aspects of human life cannot be rushed. Hearts can be stubbornly slow. Prayer is often slow. Meditation is slow. Growth is slow. Love is slow, sometimes painfully so. From the beginning, our souls were made to walk with God, at His pace.” (“Hostage to Hurry: Recovering the Human Pace to Love” by Marshall Segal)
The following are the instructions for a board game delivered to our doorstep as a gift to our family: “A non-competitive game for everyone. Place the colorful wooden snails at the starting line. Each player rolls the dice and moves the snails that match the colors thrown. As the race gets underway, players try to guess which snail will be the first and the last to cross the finish line. Players never lose a turn or get sent back. Since it’s the snails who are racing, everybody wins, and no one loses. A snail’s pace will win the race!”
Because our family celebrates the beauty found in differences, God has used this game to speak such truth into my heart while challenging me to sloooooooooooow down in order to see, share, serve, and surrender. If DIFFERENT does not equal bad and HARD does not equal bad, when did society decide that SLOW equals bad? Our pace influences our perspective and also our practices.
We see what we see and know what we know, but how do we best move from the known to the unknown to see how God sees? Like guessing the lovely letters on the chart while visiting the eye doctor, we do not know anything different until our eyes are tested. We realize how much we might be missing only when we are challenged. If you are like me, you may leave the eye doctor with a prescription, fancy frames, and a NEW perspective. Our perspectives are different because our unique experiences develop our stories. Culture, season of life, family, our stuff, education, relationships, career - ALL we know and ALL we do not know affects our perspective. How we SEE others and our world is unique and impacted by our experiences and our relationship with our God, who desires for us to adopt His pace and see clearly through His "prescription" of GRACE. This prescription is a privilege - not earned or obtained by anything we have done or could ever do. WHO we see is just as important as HOW we see. When Jesus was moving along with the chaotic crowd to heal Jairus’ daughter, I imagine his pace was deliberate with every step, but also not so rushed that He was distracted from seeing and healing the woman who touched Him. Our perspectives are different because we each wear different "glasses." God can prescribe precisely what we need so that we can see what HE SEES.
“Sitting close and humbly listening to others with different lenses allows us to learn, know, grow, and truly See as God sees. ”
Our insufficient eyes need this "prescription" of GRACE to see things from an eternal perspective. Sitting close and humbly listening to others with different lenses allows us to learn, know, grow, and truly SEE as God sees. Living and loving in this way will demonstrate God’s AMAZING GRACE to others.
Having a Spirit-led perspective will also result in practicing spiritual disciplines demonstrated by the life of Christ. Jesus was never too busy or rushed to spend time with His Father. “But despite Jesus’s instructions, the report of his power spread even faster, and vast crowds came to hear him preach and to be healed of their diseases. But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer.” (Luke 5:15-16 NLT) Because of the gift of Scripture, we can know the practices that occupied Jesus’s time, so how should these same practices be evident in our own daily rhythms? “It is inconsistent not to have time for God and to wish to spend eternity with Him.” (Author Unknown)
May our pace be determined by the practice of abiding - rooted and grounded in truth with stillness as an acceptable speed. Whereas the enemy seeks to discourage, distract, and destroy, keeping a healthy pace with steady rhythms of God’s goodness and grace allows us to operate from a place of peace and determination. When we examine the life of Christ, in particular His habits, routines, and schedule, we see a call to
WAIT
LISTEN
LEARN
LAMENT
WORSHIP
PRAY
PLAY
REST
REMEMBER
GRIEVE
GIVE
SABBATH
SURRENDER.
In this new year full of new beginnings, will you meet me at the starting line, ready to submit to stillness, or take the next steps with a surrendered speed?
“...keeping a healthy pace with steady rhythms of God’s goodness and grace allows us to operate from a place of peace and determination.”
No matter the season or circumstance, the lamp of God’s Word illuminates our next step while reminding us of His pace, perspective, and practices. Let us all trust and obey when we hear, “On your mark. Get Set. SLOOOOOOOOW.” May the beauty and truth of the first advent define our pace, ultimately impacting our perspective and practices as we anticipate the second advent even now. The rhythm of slow creates time and space to experience the hope, peace, joy, and love only found in Christ, which will radically impact both our own lives and those around us. Much like the sunrise, sunset, a sprouting seed, or steam rising from your favorite mug, join us in choosing SLOW so that we may know Him and find quiet for our noisy souls.