Why Should I Hurry?

All around I hear people saying "hurry up", "hurry, you need to decide", or just plain "HURRY!". As I was thinking this week about a friend who's important life decision seemed to be in part based on beating a time line, I began to ponder the concept of making decisions in a hurry.

So, as I often do when I want to know more, I pulled out my Bible (I started with the NIV) and looked in the concordance. Lo and behold, right there between hurl and hurt was nothing! Hurry was mysteriously absent. Not to be deterred, I went for my NRSV Bible. This time, the surrounding words were hungry and husband, but still no hurry. King James Version - no hurry. New Century Version - no hurry. (Can a person have too many Bibles?) My version of The Message doesn't have a concordance; but if it did, I'm guessing still no hurry. (Of course, with The Message, one can't be sure.)

In each of these versions of the Bible we are told to seek, go, stand, come and wait, but not to hurry. Jesus never hurried. Even when his friend Lazerus was dying, Jesus waited two days before he left for Lazerus' home. So why then, are we all so obsessed with being in a hurry to do, to decide, to go? It seems we're all afraid if we don't hurry up we'll miss out. But the truth is, we miss out, at least on the things that matter most, because we're in too much of a hurry.

So what does this mean? For me, it means if someone is telling me I need to make decision in a hurry, that someone is not God. And whatever they are wanting me decide probably isn't of God either.

Of course, if you're around our house on Sunday morning, you'll most likely still hear me shouting, "Chad, hurry up! We're going to be late for church." But then, I'm not God, I'm the Momma and sometimes Mom's just have to keep the world moving. You know what they say, "If Momma ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy!"

I guess, I'll just have to keep working on this one.