Slowing Down: Discovering the Why Behind Our HurrySample

Fear of missing out leads to a life of hurry as we attempt to keep up with the flood of information coming at us from an always-on modern digital world. Additionally, the sin of pride whispers the lie in our ears that God is moving too slowly, and therefore, a frenetic life marked by frequent multi-tasking becomes the norm. But there is another unsuspecting cause as to why we rush through the moments of our day even when we don't have anywhere, in particular, to be: Progress.

In many ways, progress is the driving force of modern life. Without realizing it, we often expect that year after year, technology, medicine, science, and other pillars of society will continue to steadily advance, providing our generation with a greater quality of life than those who came before us. Now, many of these advancements are certainly welcome changes. However, with each passing year, the momentum of progress continues to snowball, demanding more and more from each of us to fulfill the promise of an ever-increasing output.

As the demands of progress continue to snowball, you and I are left with no choice but to increase our pace of life in order to keep up. It is this new normal of hurry that is having a crippling effect on our relationships. Feeling the heavy burden of progress, we often become increasingly frustrated when others fall short of our pursuit of efficiency and productivity.

Progress and hurry have stolen from us the necessary space and time to wait patiently on God and others. Even the smallest moments throughout our day now must be allocated towards accomplishment if we are to keep up with the demands of progress.

One way we can slow down the flow of progress in our lives is to look for small windows of time throughout our day (even just five to ten minutes can be significant) where we can be still and know that nothing has to be accomplished. These windows of time could be commuting to and from work or school. Or perhaps a meeting on our calendar that was initially scheduled for an hour wraps up early. However the opportunity arises, we shouldn't be so quick to fill it with accomplishment. Instead, we would do well to lean into the words of Psalms 40:1, which says, "I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry."