Hurry... Hurry... HURRY!

In the Warrack Lectures of 1958 delivered in Scotland (and published under the title The Preacher's Calling to Be a Servant) D. T. Niles offered these words...

"Hurry means that we gather impressions but have no experiences, that we collect acquaintances but make no friends, that we attend meetings but experience no encounter. We must recover eternity if we are to find time, and eternity is what Jesus came to restore. For without it, there can be no charity."

Now, check out the date of these lectures! 1958! These words came from an era that we often glamorize in North America. But in his lectures Niles challenges a cultural issue that is all too familiar to us still today, and especially during the holidays, and that is the issue of HURRY!

Hurry is such a challenge these days that we even have a medical term for it, it's called "HURRY SICKNESS" Today, I encounter many people who are so BUSY... who seem to be in such a HURRY that their lives would completely fall apart if someone took their PDA'S (and I don't mean public displays of affection) or their Blackberry's away!

In his lectures Niles challenges all of us who fit the bill... to understand that the only way to RECOVER from this deadly disease is to understand something that is hard for all of us to wrap our heads around and that is we need to turn our perspectives from the "present" with all its urgencies and priorities... to the eternal!

Much of our HURRY in life is spent on acquiring and aspiring to all that this temporary world has to offer but the key word in this sentence is "TEMPORARY" Our time on this planet is so short and when we think that all there is to life is the time on this planet we've been given we wind up running ourselves ragged trying to pack all this life has to offer into the limited time we have! However when our focus moves from the temporary to the eternal we begin to understand that this is just a small part of what we have to look forward to as people created in the image of our mighty God.

Eternity is a long time... and we are not called to RUN to it... but if we keep on HURRYING the eternal will catch up to us quicker than many of us might want!

As John Ortberg, pastor and author, was reminded of by his good friend and mentor Dallas Willard, the best way to eliminate HURRY from our lives and to connect with things eternal... is to RUTHLESSLY ELIMINATE HURRY from our lives!

That is my Christmas prayer for us all!

Rev Trev