The practices of solitude, silence and listening to God started to slow me down and enabled me to focus my attention more and more on coming to Jesus and following him rather than talking about Jesus ...
When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.
My counselor gave me the strangest advice a few months ago. Almost out of the blue, she said, “You should start waiting in the longest lines you can find.” She meant everywhere—at the grocery store, g...
In her book Invitation to Retreat , Ruth Haley Barton shares some of the many insights she has had since she began intentionally taking intentional retreats to re-connect with God and her own des...
Exodus 18:13-24 , Leviticus 25:1-7, 1 Kings 19:4-12, Mark 6:30-32 , Luke 10:38-42, Psalm 46:10
[D]o you have margin in your life, like the white spaces between these words and the edges of the page? Having margin is about intentionally scheduling white space in your calendar to pray, rest, read...
A New York Times story reports on the positive impact school recess has on academic performance. Here’s how it begins: “The best way to improve children’s performance in the classroom may be to take t...
Psalm 23:1-3, Psalm 62:1, Matthew 11:28-30, Hebrews 4:9-10
In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding ways to rest and relax as part of a healthy, balanced life: I once read a book in which the author sa...
Philippians 2:3-4, Galatians 6:2, Matthew 20:26-28, 1 John 3:18, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26
There was a story going around about the Special Olympics. For the hundred-yard dash, there were nine contestants, all of them so-called physically or mentally disabled. All nine of them assembled at ...
It is life in slow motion, it’s heart in reverse, it’s hope-and-a-half: too much and too little at once. It’s a train that suddenly stops with no station around, and we can hear the cricket, and, lean...
Living 24/6 feels like magic and here’s why: it seems to defy the laws of physics, as it both slows down time and gives us more of it. I laugh a lot more on that day without screens. I notice everythi...
The inordinate desire in the west to increase productivity, to go faster and faster, especially in business, can actually become counterproductive. In this short story from the Chinese philosopher Men...
God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the tec...
I stepped from Plank to Plank So slow and cautiously The Stars about my Head I felt, About my Feet the Sea. I knew not but the next Would be my final inch — This gave me that precarious Gait Some call...
A primary resistance to a less hurried way of life—a resistance I find in myself and in others—is the belief that “I won’t be as productive” or that “I will fail to seize the opportunities God sets be...
Gracious God, when I think of how you created all things in a step-by-step manner, I am reminded of my own impatience. There are so many times, Lord, when I want you to move at my pace, not yours. I c...
So in the last three years, in order to reorient myself and head back onto the narrow way, I’ve given up social media and/or the internet for Lent. At first it’s agonizing. I’m like a caffeine or nico...
Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength... It is wisdom to take occasional furlough. In the long run, we shall do more by sometimes doing less.
Experienced mountaineers have a quiet, regular, short step—on the level it looks petty; but then this step they keep up, on and on as they ascend, whilst the inexperienced townsman hurries along, and ...
During my college years—in my infinite wisdom—it occurred to me that it made no sense to stop at red traffic lights when there was clearly no traffic around. So I began to stop only briefly—just long ...
Ephesians 5:16, Colossians 3:23, Ecclesiastes 6:7, Psalm 90:12, James 4:14
It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...
Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be...