It’s hard to slow down.  

This cultures worldview of movement and progress and productivity creates a guilt in us when we stop moving, when we stop producing.  When we don’t progress the way we feel like we must or others expect us to brings a sense of shame. This guilt and shame can set in when we don’t accomplish a task, get an exceptional grade on an assignment or get the job we were expecting. 

Our families and friends, without even knowing it, place these expectations on us. Sitting and resting become a pass time for a long awaited "retirement" and even when we reach this moment in our lives, the idea of slowing down seems further away that it was before we took to the pension plan. 

Regardless of our age or where we are in our living, slowing down is something that God actually expects of us.  There is a call to rest and refresh. There are calls to wait, specifically to wait on him. There are calls to slow down and journey at a pace that Jesus takes. 

It may seem backward to us, this idea of slowing down. Our reality, especially in the western church, is just like the culture of productivity and progress in our world today. The church seems to think that God wants us, or even worse, needs us to produce too.  

We feel the need, the expectation to produce content, materials, deeds of goodness and kindness.  Nothing bad, all of this is good.  Good in its place.  

It's when we expand the breadth of expectation to surpass the capacity of the individual that the good becomes wrong.  The struggle, we all feel it.  Where is the line and how far can I go without losing myself in the battle to produce?

It is a mistake that we make constantly, not understanding the word "limit". We struggle to recognize that the call to slow down, the call to rest and refresh, the call to wait, are all calls to understand the one thing we wish we didn't have, limits. 

Slowing down...walking at a pace that Jesus walks is a greater challenge today in our cultural moment than the productivity trap that most of us are in. 

Slow Down.

The Psalmist tells us:

"Be still, and know that I am God." 

The entirety of Psalm 46 evidences the work of God in the lives of his people, in his ever-existing creation. The call to his people is to behold and to be still. To experience his work before us. To see his glory. To revel in his love and grace. Be still that you would know and understand that your life and breath, your eternity and salvation rests in his hands and by his sovereign power. 

When we truly wrestle this truth of expectation into our understanding re can recognize that it means not producing like we think we need to. It means not expanding our reach with our good deeds...it means walking with Jesus without concerning ourselves with how we make it happen. 

Slowing down and walking with Jesus means we can see what he is doing before us and around us.

When we are running at our pace and we wonder out loud, "where is God when I need him?" we come face to face with the truth that we are running on our own steam and missing the opportunity to live out of his living and being. 

Where is God? He is still moving, still working, still engaging in this world and in your life, and you will see it when you slow down to behold and be still.

Jesus calls us to be with him, to find our living out of him (John 15). 

Will you walk at his pace, slow down to experience him? Will you be still and behold? 

It will change the way you see yourself. 

It will change the way you see the world.

It will change the way you understand life.

And it will begin to change the way you experience the very nature of time itself.

Slow down.