Jesus never hurried. You can read the accounts of his life in the Bible and you never see any indication that e was in a rush to do anything or get anywhere. He was constantly being bothered and interrupted… but he never was bothered, or seemed interrupted by it.
He was focused on his agenda when a guy broke in with his own need—a blind beggar on the side of the road screaming his name. He was focused on his own agenda when a woman, sick for so long and the doctors couldn’t help her, broke in… she was grabbing at his shirt.
In the United States, we wait in line for stuff like that. We wait in line to see the doctor or the optometrist. A while back I saw a sign on the wall at the doctor’s office. It said, “If you have not been called back within 30 minutes of your appointment time, please check in again at the counter.” Thirty minutes? That’s crazy. I’ve got other things to do.
But in much of the rest of the world, I’ve learned there’s no such thing as waiting in line. Sometimes lines form, but only temporarily. The rule is: he who interrupts last wins. So, if you’re waiting at the counter in the cell phone store trying to sort out your bill and someone else walks into the building, walks up to the counter and starts talking to the guy who was just talking to you… he wins… he gets Jared’s attention, at least until you interrupt again.
This is more the culture where Jesus lived. When the beggar interrupted, he had Jesus’ full attention. When the woman grabbed his shirt, he stopped and looked for her. The person who interrupted Jesus’ agenda became Jesus’ agenda. The person who interrupted his mission became his new mission.
Jesus didn’t see all these interruptions as distractions from his task… he saw them as opportunities to love his neighbor as himself.
The theologian Kosuke Koyama wrote, “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 technological speed to which we are accustomed… it goes on in the depth of your life, whether we notice or not, whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefor it is the speed the love of God walks.”
The problem, I think, is that we have been running instead of walking. We have become accustomed to moving so quickly that every interruption is a disruption, rather than a divine opportunity.
The book of 2 John is short but profound. It talks about truth and love, but mostly about how to be in the truth, and how to love. Verse 4 speaks of the joy the Apostle John felt when he learned of these children who were “walking in the truth.”
Then he describes what love is. You want to know what love is? Sure. We all do. Love, he writes, is that we “walk in obedience to his commands.”
What commands? The only one he mentions here is, “that you walk in love.”
And, then, a warning, a caution to us that we might not lose what we have in Christ: “Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God…”
Today, walk in the truth. Walk in obedience. Walk in love. Don’t run ahead. This is the speed of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the speed of love.
Read more in this series: Selah, Margin, and Sabbath.