There’s a booklet out there called Slow Down To The Speed of Joy. Good advice, though we might modify that to: Slow Down To the Speed of God. 

What better velocity could there be?

It’s the speed of joy but also the speed of satisfaction, peace, holiness, worship, humility, and completeness.

It is the speed of God’s timing. It’s the pace of Grace.

There’s the expression, “Godspeed,” and indeed we like a little bit of a hurry, when we need or want something now, when we pray for needs.

The Lord doesn’t always see it that way. God’s speed infinitely exceeds that of light. He can be all places in less than an instant. In Heaven there is no time and therefore no “speed limit.” Everything unfolds onto eternity. All is endless. All is accessible in the move of a thought.

But surely you have noticed (perhaps at times with great frustration) how gradual the Lord can be.

Look at that way he unfolds nature. Look at how “slow” the growth of many plants can be.

But also look at how wondrously they “evolve.” Note the intentionality.

Branches grow, the petals unfold. The imperceptible becomes magnificent. Trees can take centuries to reach full maturity, but what heights and strength they attain (witness redwoods).

The oldest living individual tree known is Methuselah, a Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) located in the White Mountains of California and estimated to be over 4,850 years old. It resides in the Inyo National Forest, with its exact location kept secret to protect it. That’s older than the pyramids—and in many ways, more wondrous. (Note how well-rooted it is.)

The same is true in our lives.

One way of doing this, of rooting ourselves, of growing in the timing of God, is to simply meditate on God and His Creation. Spring and summer are optimal. But really any season. Take note of nature.  Slow down and look at what you usually pass in a flash. Somehow, materialism has related it to irrelevance. But nothing God made should go without notice. Doing so brings tranquility.

One has to “rise” (with the risen Christ) above and move beyond worldliness, evolve with His timing and Spirit.

Our worship wanes when we make life too mundane, rote, and routine, losing spontaneity (best expressed as love).

We lose it when mysticism is set aside in favor of idolatry.

As one commentator notes, “Traditional religion–Christianity in the West–wasn’t widely considered as a solution to the problem, mainly because it seemed to have made compromises with rationalism.  The soullessness and lack of mystery that the young hated about modernity was replicated in the Church.”

Bring mystery back into church. Again and always, rise with the Risen One. Go in the flow of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer sets the timer.

Godspeed!