The Speed of God

My hands seem fused to the steering wheel and it feels like we’re going a hundred miles an hour. Then, redlights—redlights—redlights, annnnnd STOP. Wheels start rolling, picking up speed, and we’re going a hundred miles an hour again. Then full stop. Jarringly. Bumper-to-bumper, side-by-side. I typically love to drive, but this was Talladega with no roll cage. It was the Sunday after this past Thanksgiving, and we were northbound on I-85.

 

I’d say we were fifteen miles shy of the South Carolina boarder when, for no discernible reason, everyone decided to stop. Again. It was supposed to be a unanimous decision, but a car or two somewhere behind us decided to vote no. We heard it before we saw it. Screeching tires. Then successive banging. I looked in my driver-side mirror and saw the accident scene unfolding and approaching us. All I could spit out was, “Please, Lord.” It all ended four cars short of where we were sitting on the highway to hell.

 

No sooner had the crashing stopped then the traffic ahead of us let loose. There was no time to assess—I could only hope there were good Samaritans behind us as we launched full throttle ahead. Little Rock to Birmingham was the warmup; Birmingham to Greenville was a white flag, last lap, stress and anxiety induced sprint to the finish line. Thank God we made it home safely.

 

I’m taking those last five frenetic hours on I-85 as a metaphor for an unexamined life—life in the fast lane, as it were, where speed is one of the conduits to supposed success. But as I see it in my office, feel it in my bones, and read about it in both ancient and current literature, that fast-paced, always-distracted, adrenaline-filled life is also a significant contributor to anxiety and depression.

 

This is not a new problem and there is a remedy to be practiced. I’ll use as my case study the well-worn example of Martha and her sister Mary in Luke 10. When you read the text straight-up, it’s clear that Jesus is not correcting Martha for her acts of service. First, Jesus loves Martha (John 11:5), and second, Jesus does not make any such correcting comments to her when Martha’s serving a different and important meal (John 12:2). What then is the issue with Martha in Luke 10?

 

The issue seems to be one of order, or priorities, or values, within her heart. Jesus and the writers of Christian Scripture think of the heart as the mechanism through which a person sees things and life—as if your heart has eyes (e.g., Matthew 6:19-24). If your heart is full of greed, for example, then all you can see around you are things and ways to acquire them. If your heart is possessed with lust, then you’re looking for the next person on which to feast your eyes. If your heart is occupied with insecurity, then you’ll surely see the flaws in others and judge them for it.

 

We don’t know exactly what Martha’s heart was full of, but Jesus points out that she was “anxious and troubled about many things.” In that place, Martha’s heart showed its disordered priorities in the way she made verbal judgments on both her sister and Jesus. In that moment, Martha’s heart was running a hundred miles an hour. Her heart’s misorientation showed when she suddenly stopped to make a wrecking comment.  

 

Jesus offers a remedy to all that chaotic racing in one’s heart. When the Spirit of Christ comes into a heart, He recalibrates it and then functions like a governor on the speed our heart runs. When I say recalibrate, I mean that Jesus takes our natural heart’s inclination to do-in- order-to-be and turns it around into a be-in-order-to-do inclination. It’s a critical observation regarding how the Gospel works. Christ makes you His child first (the being part) through no effort on our part, and only then commissions us to service (the doing part). Yet our natural selves reverse that order in an attempt to create our own identity. The result is more striving, more working, even more serving, but with proliferating dysfunctions.

 

In technical terms, the grammar of the Gospel says the indicative (be) comes before the imperative (do). For example, Ephesians 5:14-15 says, “For this reason it says, ‘Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you’ [the being of the Gospel]. Therefore, be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise” [the doing of the Gospel]. This echoes what Paul writes earlier in Ephesians 2:1-10, where we are dead in our sins until God makes us alive in Christ (be) and then assigns us good works (do).

 

We are first loved by God. Just be. And then we live as those who are loved by God. Go do.

 

In his book, The Life We Are Looking For, Andy Crouch cites Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama as saying that “the speed of God” is three miles per hour—the speed at which Jesus moved through His earthly service to humankind. Koyama writes,

 

“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 is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our 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 therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.”

 

Let’s admit some walk faster than others. I struggle at times to keep up with my wife when we’re out walking. The natural pace of leader personalities is just faster than that of helper personalities. Regardless, the indicative-imperative, be-do, of the Gospel still applies. Leaders will struggle to “be” and helpers will struggle to “do.” Leaders show their love by getting things done. Helpers show their love by being with others in their need. Yet leaders will get healthier when they practice surrendering their plans, and helpers will get healthier when they practice courage by stepping into the unknown. Their common link is trust: Do you really trust that God loves you in your being and in your doing?

 

If we don’t purposely and regularly spend time reorienting our heart to this Gospel grammar, we’ll naturally, without thinking, go back to our heart’s default setting of doing in order to be. In which case we’ll be running wide open down the highway. Exhausted. Stressed. Edgy. Critical. Anxious. Depressed.

 

When we gear down for periods of time in order to pay attention, to take in, to meditate upon, to orient the events of each day to the love of God for us in Christ, we’ll find ourselves with more capacity, clearer thinking, and the ability to steady our emotions. We’ll be able to love others for their sakes rather than use others for our own sake. We’ll be more charitable with those who’s flaws we see. We’ll be better able to rejoice even in the face of all the sadness and brokenness of this world.

 

Because the love of God in Christ walks at three miles per hour exactly for your benefit.