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Do Your Days Rush By at a Hectic Pace?
25th January 2021
 Have you ever stopped to think that your mobile phone and emails have not given you more time? Just more things to do in the same amount of time
We leave our messages in one place while we take our bodies elsewhere. Instead of doing one thing after another, we shoot out a variety of tasks, and then swoop down on them later, needing to deal with them all at once
In a four-minute clip from a street scene from an old Orson Welles film and a similar clip from a more recent film, you will see an amazing difference. In the early film, the camera records ‘real time’ – people get out of their cars, walk across streets, wait for lights, speak to other people, enter a bank. In the more recent film, a similar sequence was reduced to a half a dozen quick cuts. Transition time was eliminated
Modern life teaches us that ‘down time’ is wasted. Time is money. So mobile phones, emails, etc, enable us to ‘waste’ less time. The tempo of cultural life picks up, the heartbeat of daily life races, and our own body rhythms respond with adrenaline, cramped muscles and heart attacks
To take time out for daily prayer, for a quiet walk that is not to the next meeting, for daydreaming or for Bible study becomes a cross-cultural act. Following Christ, waiting on Him, is a countercultural act
One lovely biblical phrase is ‘in the fullness of time, it came to pass’. This suggests four things: that time crests like a wave; that there is a right moment for things to happen; that it’s not ours to plan that moment, but to recognise it; and that we are not the primary agents of what happens in the world
So, feel free to accept God’s offer of rest when you are weary; receive each moment of your life as a gift from God’s hand; pray to discern what each new encounter you make requires of you, and freely entrust everything else to God’s care
Parish Pump
this article also appeared in Parish Life
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