“My client is not in a hurry”

Reflections on stress, rest and fun

Somehow I’ve always felt like I should be ‘doing something’. Preferably doing something ‘useful’, ‘for others’, something that requires discipline, selflessness, sacrifice and hard work. And the more I do of this the better; so to be rushing around, super-stressed feels extra spiritual.   But I’m realising that the people who were like that in the Bible were generally called Pharisees and they were getting it wrong a lot of the time.

I want to clarify that I think discipline, sacrifice and hard work are important and they are all commended in the Bible. It’s the stressed out rushing around like it all depended on me that’s not.

I was first arrested by this concept five years ago when I read Ann Voskamp’s quote “Life’s not an emergency. It’s a gift.” I realised that I was living mostly like it was an emergency.

More recently I heard a fantastic quote attributed to Gaudi the famous Spanish architect whose plans for the cathedral in Barcelona kept on getting grander and more intricate. Someone commented on how long it would take to complete the work and Gaudi replied “My client is not in a hurry.”  I love that. I am in so much of a hurry to be ‘completed’; for God to have finished working on me. But God is not in a hurry.

In the Bible, the kingdom of God is compared to a mustard seed growing into a tree. It is not a quick, dramatic process but a long, slow unfolding and unfurling over years that results in the amazing transformation.  That’s what God’s work in us is like, a gradual growing that doesn’t seem noticeable from day to day, but over time is an incredible change.

I sometimes live like God created me because there were so many jobs He needed doing. But we weren’t created to simply be a workforce. We were created for relationship. Relationships take time. They are slow.  At the end of my life, more important than the question “Have I been productive?” will be the question “Do you know Me? Do you love Me?”

What does this look like practically? Let’s take reading the Bible as an example. Am I prepared to slow down from racing through the Bible to have ‘achieved’ reading it in a year? Reading it in a year is a good thing but is it at the expense of hearing from God? Am I reading to meet with my Lord – to hear what He would say to me or to tick off something else on my to do list? It’s easy to turn spiritual discipline into accomplishing things in our own  strength to feel good about ourselves. Far better to read with a listening heart, ready to stop and ponder and hear what He wants to show me and teach me rather than ploughing on ‘to get to the end’.

I’ve often thought of rest as ‘inferior’ and ‘weak’ until my husband pointed out that God commanded it in the ten commandments. That brought me up short! That’s how important God considers rest to be. He deliberately created us to need to spend a reasonable chunk of each day sleeping.  Maybe rest, in its rightful place, is actually one of God’s good gifts to us, to be received with thankfulness and enjoyed as His blessing.

Similarly I’ve had a wrong attitude about ‘fun’. I’ve tended to dismiss it as trivial and frivolous. But actually God invented fun. He made laughter. He laughs! When I think of my children and picking them up from school, I don’t ask “Did you work hard?” (although I hope they did) but ‘Did you have a good day?” I want them to have had fun and enjoyed their day, not simply to have learned in drudgery.  It’s been quite transforming to consider that God actually wants me to enjoy each of the days He has given me.

God has filled the world with wonderful amazing things. He wants us to enjoy them and have fun as well as knuckle down to the discipline of the hard things. As with all things, we need to walk daily in dependence on God to get the right balance.

Father, thank You for the good gifts of rest and fun that you have given us. I chose to accept them and enjoy them as part of your expression of love to me. Praise You. Amen.