written by Bethany McKinney Fox
We’re starting a new series! This is the first entry in devotional-style series that are written with the intention of slowing down, centering, and finding ground during your day.
Photo by Raphael Schaller on Unsplash
As our rhythms and usual patterns of busyness and productivity are in flux right now, it might be a good time to sit with God and reflect on the speed of our lives. Especially on the other side of a flurry of Holy Week and Easter activity, and all the innovation and adapting that has been happening over the past weeks (even more than usual for us church starters, who already adapt and innovate all the time), it might be worth being prayerful about the speed at which we’re moving, and reflecting on whether God might be calling us to think about and live with a different relationship to speed and time.
Below you’ll find a short scripture, some reflection questions, and a closing reading, all connecting to speed and slowness - ready for you to engage at a time that feels helpful for you. Maybe first thing in the morning with a cup of coffee and a journal, maybe with a lit candle in the evening before bed, maybe with a friend, partner, or colleague together - or however you feel called to take some space to engage with God in prayer and reflection.
Opening Prayer
“I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong, and let your heart take courage;
wait for the Lord!”Psalm 27:13-14
Questions for Reflection
Take some time to be with God as you reflect on any or all of these questions, whichever of these feel helpful, or anything else the Spirit is bringing to mind for you as you think about time and wonder about the speed at which life is going these days. It may help to write things down to help organize your thoughts or feelings, or to make space for silence and just see what bubbles up in you.
How has the pace of your daily life changed over these past weeks of being “safer at home?” What has felt more rushed? What has slowed down?
For the aspects of your life that seem busier and faster paced, how has that felt? Energizing? Exhausting? Typical? Fun? Irritating? A mixture? Something else? As you notice these feelings, you’re invited to refrain from judging them as good or bad, and to engage them with compassion and curiosity, and to wonder what might be bringing these feelings to the surface. You can write them down if that helps to clarify.
For places in your life where you have slowed down, or even paused, how has it felt to go slower? Relieving? Uncomfortable? Present? Anxious? A mixture? Something else? Just as in the previous question, as you notice these feelings, you’re invited to refrain from judging them as good or bad, and to engage them with compassion and curiosity, and to wonder what might be bringing these feelings to the surface. You can write them down if that helps to clarify.
Take time with God to reflect on anything coming to mind about “waiting for the Lord” as the Psalmist writes. What does that look like for you right now?
After thinking about your speed of life and how you’ve been responding to changes in pace, is there anything you sense God calling you to do or continue to reflect on?
Closing Prayer
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
Written by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ; excerpted from Hearts on Fire
Go in Peace, friends!
Rev. Dr. Bethany McKinney Fox is the Director of Spiritual Formation for Cyclical LA. She is the organizing pastor of Beloved Everybody Church in Los Angeles, an ability-inclusive community where people with and without intellectual and other disabilities lead and participate together. Her recent book Disability and the Way of Jesus (2019, IVP Academic) explores how to follow the healing way of Jesus to create communities of mutual thriving.