A Simpler Time
Do you remember the show “The Little House on the Prairie”? There were plenty of adventures and exciting situations in the life of that show, but one thing was more alluring to me than all of that: the slow pace. There was never a big sense of rush. They weren’t running from task to task. They had chores and troubles and things to do, but the way they went about it was slow and purposeful. We can get that same sense when we go camping or vacationing somewhere remote without phone signals and emails. Similarly, it was interesting to me that after a snowstorm here in KC kept everyone inside for a couple days this year, most of the people I talked to said they really loved the change of pace. I don’t know about you, but I thoroughly enjoy being disconnected from the rest of the planet so much so that I only need to worry about what’s right in front of me.
But back in the real world, things move faster. We enjoy fast food, fast cars, and airplanes capable of transporting us thousands of miles in a few hours. Microwaves and toasters speed up meals from 30 minutes to 3. We’re always moving from one thing quickly to the next, be it a task or fulfilling a desire. We can’t keep track of all we have to do without making lists and keeping calendars (which are always at our fingertips). Our standard for home internet speed is tenfold what it was a few years ago, and when our smartphones don’t load the news, facebook, or our GIF selection instantly, we throw our heads back in agony. Companies all over the world are creating product after product to save time and make our tasks easier. We’ve truly never been more efficient. Naturally, we take advantage of the time we save to fit more things into our day. If we can do this quickly enough, we’ll have time for the other. If little Johnny wants to play football, we don’t remove anything from our schedule. We just move some things around to make it fit.
"Our inclination toward business is higher than it has ever been."
There’s also a perceived social pressure to do more. Our pride causes us to compete, doing more and more to keep up with those around us. Stillness feels like laziness, and we don’t want to appear lazy. It has become more difficult than ever to put ourselves on pause. A new study by Microsoft Corp. found that since the year 2000, the average human attention span has decreased from 12 seconds to just 8 seconds. Now 12 seconds is nothing to brag about, but that 4 seconds is more than a 33% loss! No doubt the mobile revolution has played a large part in this, but whether it’s just another cause or a byproduct, our inclination toward business is higher than it ever has been.
Master or Slave
What if we treated all our relationships with the fast-paced, ‘skip this add’ mentality that we adorn in 2025? Christians today often struggle to set aside 5 minutes of their time to read scripture and pray. What if we applied that model to the woman we’re courting or the man we’re chasing? What if we spent the same amount of time on crafting life skills? I’m not sure we would wind up married or able to contribute much to society if we gave our attention to those things for just a few minutes at a time.
There’s a widely recognized rule in the trade world that it takes about 10,000 hours to master a skill. That’s usually at least 10 years of routine, week-long practice. Being good at something takes time. I’ve been married 11 years now, and I can tell you my relationship with my wife reached a greater level as we approached that decade mark. When I look at titans of marriage who have endured for decades beyond us, I can see that time spent really shapes the spender. But what if the clock of your week is spread out too much? There’s a reason for the saying “Jack of all trades and master of none”. If you spend a little time on many things, you aren’t able to spend much time on any in particular. Here are the ways this plays out practically:
| SYMPTOMS OF LIVING TOO FAST
1) We Have Short Attention
This plays out in a lot of ways, and I spoke to many above. Most of them are harmless in themselves, but strung together as a key part of our character, those moments of impatience have detrimental impacts to us and those we’re mean’t to impact. The word ‘attention’ comes from the verb ‘to tend’. Think about attention like a garden you care for. You have to tend to a garden for it to thrive. If you get tired of it after the initial tilling and planting, your seeds may not get enough water to survive, leaving it a barren pile of dirt. If you don’t pay attention to the weeds, your good plants will be overrun.
2) We Have Shallow Relationships
One thing I’ve learned from the apostle Paul’s first letter to the church at Corinth is that what’s most important in this life apart from the Lord, is other people. I have a mentor who always told me “Ministry is people”. This is true for those employed at a church AND for the ministry of every believer. When we aren’t able to slow down, we don’t merely get bored with tasks and videos, but with people as well. I’m afraid for the way cancel culture and social media is constantly pushing us from person to person, from liking this to identifying with that, because I believe that practice leaks into our personal relationships. When one is too slow or too much work, we feel led to throw in the towel and move on. Lucky for us, our busy schedule is a great excuse to not make time for others. People are often messy, and it’s easy to take the depth we think we need and leave the rest in reserve.
3) We Have Little Resilience
Have you ever cooked a meal and something disastrous happened that ruined the whole thing? That’s happened to me, let’s just say more than once. And instead of taking everything back out and starting over, you know what I usually do? You guessed it… I order out! It’s common knowledge over the last decade or so that the career landscape of the West has changed dramatically. Workers are more likely to jump around from employer to employer to find a little bit more pay, a little bit more benefits, or a little bit less work. We’re always hustling. While the trend is complex and wide-reaching in its cause and effect, I believe it points to an issue in our hearts: we aren’t accustomed to sticking it out. In the same way things lose their luster and excitement too quickly, we grow tired of working hard at the same place for the same thing. And this affects how we suffer, how we take on hard things in all aspects of life. As Lucky’s dad would say, “We’re raising a nation of squibs!”
4) We Mistake Contentment for Laziness
I think the sloth has gotten a bad rap. The animal does what it needs to do to survive, yet its name is used to describe people who are unmotivated and uncaring towards their own responsibilities. The sloth doesn’t deserve this! I actually think we can take a lesson from this fungus-carrying, hippy-eyed, ugly creature: speed doesn’t equate to life. In a society that wears business like a badge of honor, what would it look like to rest in the necessary things without adding extra? Are there things on your plate that you wish you could take off, but you’re concerned what others would think?
5) We Make Small Investments
If your relationships and areas of investment are shallow, and you aren’t spending considerable time in any of them, then your impact isn’t going very deep. People who are always moving from thing to thing don’t have time to slow down and be what others really need. My little girl has fed ducks at the park on occasion, and as any 3-year old, she loves it! What typically happens while feeding a group of ducks is this: You give out small bites to watch the ducks run up and grab it. Once they get a piece, they stay to try to get another, because they’re not satiated. Once the bread is all gone, the ducks walk away to find more food. After all, they each only received a morsel. None of them was filled. None of them received anything substantial. People who are spread too thin don’t usually do much for any one person or cause. It’s not because they don’t have the desire, but because they don’t have the bandwidth.
"Distraction is one of the most damaging enemies of the human soul"
Master or Slave
So, what’s the antidote? How do we combat the business of our schedules? How do we battle impatience and become more effective, resilient, thoughtful people?
1- We must learn to linger in the good things, to slow down and spend our attention and time on what’s most important. In a world where we’re constantly under pressure to pursue the next thing, God’s people are called to be focused and intentional. Jesus was an amazing model for taking things slow. He was a busy man, steadily on the move, but He was never pressed or stressed about getting to the next thing. He also consistently pulled away from the busiest times to pray and be with the Father. Looking at his life in scripture, it seems like nothing was wasted. He lived slowly, but he didn’t live ineffectively. Fill your life with God. Distraction is one of the most damaging enemies of the human soul, because we’re investing our time in things that don’t matter. Focus on doing the things that are righteous and true and good (Eph 5:9).
2- We must learn to say ‘no’ to the other things. Dallas willard discussed how we should redeem our time in his book “The Scandal of the kingdom”. He urged believers to redeem their time, to buy it back or it will be lost. He notes in his book that the days are evil (Eph 5:16), and when we give all our moments to things that ultimately disappear, we will look back on a life full of missed opportunities. “Today is the day of salvation” is an all encompassing statement about our lives (Isaiah 49:8, 2 Cor 6:2). Our time is already poised to be wasted. It must be bought back by proactive provision and care.
The challenge is this: be active in bringing everything that fills our time back into God’s time and make it count for HIM. God is in our moments. We redeem our time when we let Christ lead us as we bring each moment into the Kingdom of God. So Christian, manage your schedule in faith, as we’re encouraged in Matthew 6:25-34. God is in sovereign control of the universe, but He does not manage your calendar; you do. Planning your life involves saying ‘no’ more than saying ‘yes’. As William Martin suggested, “Cut some big chunks out of each week for family, rest, meditation, prayer, and flower sniffing.” It’s a good practice to ask yourself how much of your time really centers around the renewal and development of your life, and how much time is spent doing those little things you think you just have to do. Be careful you’re not failing to redeem the time. Remember though, redeemed time is not necessarily religious time, but it is time that has to do with abundant life. Buy back your meaningless time and attention, and you will plant seeds that bear fruit for millennia.
3- We must be thankful for the next thing in front of us. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:6-7). Contentment is a fierce weapon in the battle against tirelessly striving toward temporal things. Thanksgiving, as the apostle Paul well knew, is a way we practice our ability to be content. We must settle our minds on the things we have and the things we have to do. Making space in our time and thoughts to give God thanks for the things on our newly-whittled to-do list helps us to view the redemptive potential in them; it enables us to see the way God can and will work through them for eternal purposes. Thankfulness also helps us to realize the blessing in what we are already doing, so that we don’t get caught up in whatever the Joneses have on their calendar (no offense to any actual Joneses who read this!).
Linger Like a King
If we want to assume the pace Jesus demonstrated, and with it His focus, it will take practice and intentionality. It won’t just happen because you wish it would. You have to slow down. Create margin in your life; margin is extra time where nothing is planned. Then, block out scheduled time for the things that are most important. Set up reminders to pray for God’s help in this, and see what He reveals to you throughout the day. When it comes to simplifying your calendar, maybe you need to start small and cut out the easiest thing that makes it hard on you but also doesn’t add much value to anyone’s life. Perhaps the choice for you there is more difficult, requiring a more dramatic lifestyle change. Either way, the result is worth it! There are many reasons to narrow your focus and slow down. Consider the inverse of the symptom list above. Slowing your pace of life leads to healthier relationships, promotes physical health, and grows you in patience… but let’s focus on spiritual reasons as well.
"If you are spending time with the object of your affection, your affection will grow."
| Biblical Reasons to Slow Down:
Besides the benefits to your mind and family, there are noteworthy biblical reasons to slow down and create margin in your life.
- It frees you to focus on others. This means helping friends or strangers in need, sharing the gospel, encouraging fellow believers, and serving at church. If you’re not speeding to and from your garage all week, it allows you to lift your head and look at the needs of those around you. If you don’t have the bandwidth for the things in that list, the things outside that list need to go to make room. If you’re a child of God, he’s given you a ministry to bring light into dark places. If you sleep in a house near houses with other human beings in them, then there are plenty of dark places nearby. 1 John 2:17 says, “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”
- It frees you to focus on God. When it comes to care and attention, lovers linger over what they love. I’ve been married long enough to realize the truth in that statement. If you are spending time with the object of your affection, your affection will grow. If you are not, your affection will fade. If you’re new to spending time with God, 5 minutes is a great place to start! But it certainly shouldn’t stay there. In learning to linger, we have to apply ‘slowing down’ to our relationship with the Lord as we fix our eyes (this is an active task) on the Kingdom and trust God to take care of the rest. This means honing disciplines that strengthen our relationship with Him, such as prayer, bible study, contemplation, solitude, and fasting.
- It enables you to grow in Christ. We’re continually called by the ministry and words of Jesus to focus on heavenly things, that it would lead us into character growth. Paul writes in Colossians 3 about our new life in Christ, that we are to “seek the things above, where Christ is”. He continues, saying as we put to death sins in our life, that we are being renewed in Christ. In the church, we call this the process of sanctification, and it requires steady attention.
Closing
The biggest danger with living by a task list is that with so many tasks flooding the 16-18 hours you’re awake, the things of God tend to become just another task. Instead of being defining traits of your life, spending time with the Lord, making disciples, building up and serving the Church are merely added to the list of things to do. Then, when our calendar is filled to the brim, the things of God become an obligation, a point of begrudging obedience. This is in direct contradiction with Colossians 3 (And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him). It is on our worship to the one true God that the rest of our lives is to be built and carried out.
Take a look at yours or your family’s calendar. Take your metaphoric scissors out and slash the unnecessary. Find those ‘hard days’ in your week and make them easier by saying ‘no’ to something. Then use your newfound time and peace to seek the Lord and all He has for you to walk in.
“The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.”
Book Recommendation
I love the book The ruthless elimination of hurry by John Mark Comer. It’s a super easy read. Check it out, and let me know what you think if you read it!
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