As someone busy about God's work I have often become impatient with delays and hold-ups of various kinds. "Here I am in God's service," I have thought. "The King's business requires haste, and this trivial problem is holding me up!"
Often this is the lower nature getting the better of me. It is all too easy to think the world should stop for me when I am on pastoral duties, especially when I am behind schedule.
Recently I have caught myself becoming impatient even when at a loose end, when there is nothing to rush for. Something has delayed me and I have become really cross. Then I ask myself, "This rush of emotional energy is completely pointless! I have no deadlines to meet today!"
God's work is urgent, of course. Jesus taught His disciples that there were only so many hours in the day, and He and they must keep working while daylight lasted (John 9:4). It grieves me to see many churches and church leaders self-indulgent in the extreme and lacking in urgency. Yet we look for a day when the march of time will no longer be allowed to dictate our lives:
Hidden in the hollow of His blessed hand,
Never foe can follow, never traitor stand;
Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care,
Not a blast of hurry touch the spirit there.
- Frances Ridley Havergal
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