Leader's Insight: Never Hurry Again?

One of last year’s most significant moments for me occurred during a personal retreat I took at the end of a busy summer. The summer had begun with sad and shocking news: my supervising pastor suddenly resigned due to a moral failure. We were still feeling the shock waves from this event two weeks later when our third child was born.

One major low, one major high. One completely unexpected, the other totally expected. We were processing a wide range of emotions following these huge transitions.

In late July, my wife and our children, with the help of my wife’s sisters, flew from our ministry field in the Pacific Northwest back to the East coast to visit family. I would join them in a few days. My plan had been to stay and finish up some work. As I began to get honest with myself, I wondered how much work I could get done, given the level of physical and emotional exhaustion I was feeling. I decided instead to approach my senior pastor and ask for a few personal days. Graciously, he agreed.

I threw my backpack and tent into the back of my Subaru and began driving toward the mountains. The Cascades were calling my name. As I made my way up to the campsite, I asked God if he had anything to tell me about this time. Often when I pray prayers like this, I get frustrated because I don’t “hear” anything. But this time I distinctly heard him say something.

What I heard him say was “Linger.”

One word. That’s it.

I began to think about that word and tried to picture what it would look like to linger during my retreat. I began to reflect on my tendency to be a rather driven, task-oriented person, who sometimes finds it difficult to simply “enjoy the moment” because I am already thinking about the next task. Even before I arrived at my campsite, God gave me an object lesson in lingering.

One hard word

Just outside the National Forest boundary lies a quaint mountain village with a bookstore I love. I had the idea to stop there and pick out a book to enjoy during my retreat. I love books!

Soon I found myself absorbed in checking out all the latest arrivals. Fifteen minutes passed, then thirty. I was beginning to feel antsy, that I needed to hurry up and make a decision so I could “get on with my retreat” when I again heard “linger.” So I took a deep breath and joyfully frittered away another fifteen minutes before finally selecting what would prove to be an intriguing collection of short stories.

I arrived at the campground, only to find that the site I really wanted, the one by the babbling creek, was taken. I was about to move on to another site when I remembered “linger.” So I waited and looked again. Sure enough, the guy was packing up his car.

I could give you another half-dozen instances during this time when I was reminded to linger: lingering by my campfire under a star-studded sky that night, lingering by a pristine alpine lake the next day, lingering over a hearty lunch on the way down the mountain two days later. It began to dawn on me that perhaps God had not just given me a word for my retreat, but one for the rest of my life.

One of my observations about the Gospels is that it seems Jesus was never in a hurry, even when the need was dire. In Luke 8, Jairus falls at Jesus’ feet and pleads with him to heal his dying daughter.

But on the way, as the crowd presses in around him, Jesus stops to ask what seemed to his disciples a ridiculous question: “Who touched me?” Jesus waits—lingers, you might say—until a woman summons the courage to step forth. The result of Jesus’ lingering is a moment this woman will remember the rest of her life. (Obviously, a minor detail in the passage is that Jairus’ daughter dies while all of this taking place, but of course this is no problem for Jesus. A similar incident occurs in John 11, where Jesus oddly lingers with his disciples upon receiving news that his dear friend Lazarus is gravely ill.)

Also, we see Jesus frequently withdrawing by himself to pray—lingering with his Father—despite the crowd’s seemingly infinite needs. He invites his closest followers to do the same: “Come away with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” (Mark 6.31).

Dallas doesn’t live here anymore

Picking up on this observation, Dallas Willard tells pastors what has now become a memorable one-liner: “I pray you will never hurry again.” The first time I heard this, I almost laughed out loud. Earth to Dallas: Hello?! Are we living in the same world?

Which shows how far removed I was from a lifestyle of lingering. Slowly, I am learning how, but it is not easy for a recovering achieve-aholic.

Appropriately, about the time of my retreat, I began working through a set of spiritual exercises specifically designed to help me learn to linger in God’s presence. The introduction to these meditations states, “Enjoy your time, even if it is seemingly unproductive or quiet.”

It may not surprise you that this was a real stretch for me at first. After all, I had become quite comfortable with the goal-oriented approach of “quiet times” patterned after the inductive Bible study method. I approached each devotional period with questions to be answered and important life applications to be drawn from the passage.

My spiritual director says that most of us take a consumeristic approach to our devotional life. We tend to treat it as a religious transaction that we can “get something” from. But a better analogy, he says, is like being at the mall and seeing a mother and daughter walking together, arm-in-arm. The point is the “being with” not the “getting from.”

I am growing to love these meditations, to give up the right to see results from my devotions, to learn to imitate Jesus in his lifestyle of holy lingering. Ironically, I am learning that I can linger even when I am quite busy, as I often am now as the father of three small children.

But I refuse to hurry.

James Walters lives and ministers in North Carolina.

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