The Rest of the Story

Hurrying seldom pays off.  Yesterday I was given a lesson about hurrying to get somewhere.  My reason for hurrying was to get to a doctor appointment on time.  I wolfed down breakfast, spoke the language of hurrying which only creates anxiety, and then suffered a major patience breakdown every time traffic required slowing down.  Amazingly, I arrived with fifteen minutes to spare.  At my appointment time I was in the exam room waiting for the doctor to appear.  I sat there and sat there and sat there some more.  An hour and fifteen minutes later the doctor walks in, apologizes for the delay, and then gets down to business.    

I could not believe that all my hurrying was wasted.  I got there early and then had to wait for over an hour.  Does God have a sense of humor, or not?  Maybe the long wait was not so much about humor as me doing penance for not paying attention to the many gifts God was giving me throughout the day.  If the long wait after hurrying was my punishment for not being present in the present moment and for not receiving with gratitude the gifts He was giving throughout the day, I suppose I must acknowledge it was a light punishment with a tinge of irony.    

Whether the waiting was a divine reminder about the futility of living a hurried life, I cannot say for sure, but I do know the whole day was an example of what happens when we live out of sync with the Creator and the creation in which He has immersed us.  Living in a hurry creates this internal rush of gut churning anxiety.  It also causes us to be so preoccupied with ourselves that we cannot be attentive to the needs of those around us.  We were not created to hurry.  Everything has its season and there is no need to rush any single day of anyone of them.  All it does is get us out of step with whatever it is that God might intend for us to be about in the day He is giving us.