Dallas Willard, the professor of philosophy and author of profound insight, encouraged us to “ruthlessly eliminate hurry from our lives”. The Nazi prisoner and author, Corrie Ten Boom wrote, “If the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.” Pastor and Author, John Mark Comer, says that God walks slowly. The common thread in these writings is time. We tend to think of time as limited and so we hurry around, filling our limited time with as much as we possibly can. In doing this we believe we are using a limited commodity (time) to accomplish much. To “waste time” is deeply frowned upon by modern society.
Yet, God is in time. He is in the moments - the one’s that we rush past as we fill our schedules and keep ourselves busy. As a young mother (many years ago), I remember how long it would take to nurse my babies. There was so much work to do and these little babies took so very long to feed. I had a friend, Audrey, who God sent to support me through the early months of nursing my firstborn. It was Audrey who encouraged me to use the times of feeding as times to pray for my child. It was there that I met God in the moments. While sitting in a comfortable chair, my two-year old son playing on the rug and my newborn little girl feeding, time would become a doorway to eternity where God and I would pass through freely. God is in the moments. His presence is with us, all the time. He walks slowly, shortening his pace so that we can keep up. It is in the moments that he shows us the important, the profound, the simple, the joyful and the painful. It is in the moments that he changes us and forms us and loves us, deeply. It is in the moments, the one’s we dare to make and the ones we slow down to take, that our soul is shaped well.
At Orchard: Africa we have come through our month of events. As an organization we intentionally set aside time and we create moments. Moments to gather old and new supporters. Moments to say thank you. Moments to communicate our heart and our calling. It is in these moments that we have seen God - in the smiles of our volunteers, in the bright eyes of a child on a carousel ride, in the generosity of a donor, in the face of one of our beneficiaries appearing in a video, in the moments between the arrangements, where God lives and breathes and makes his presence known. It is in these moments, these holy moments, that you and I find our joy and we find our will to carry on. For, in these moments, we come to know that the joy of the Lord is the source of our strength. It is he who is the Lord of our time. May be think on these things!