Every once in a while I find myself in a hurry. My wife thinks it's more often than that. Be that as it may, sometimes I want to get things done as fast as I can so that I can move on to something else -- and get that done as fast as I can. So sometimes I have to ask myself, "What's the hurry?"
Even if I cannot find an answer to that question, I often have to remind myself that, given modern inventions, I can do so much more in so much less a time than I used to -- like writing and sending this reflection. Not only do computers beat even electric typewriters by a mile, there are high-speed copying machines that make mimeographs obsolete. Look what email has done to snail mail, much to the U.S. Post Office’s chagrin and profit loss and debt.
There are some things, however, that cannot be rushed. I suspect, just thinking without much reflecting, that the most important things in life simply cannot be hurried. They take time. As much as I want winter to end and spring to come, winter ends on time and spring comes on time no matter what I do. As much as I want a cut to heal as fast as possible, it heals in its own time. Life moves at its own pace.
For whatever reason I have been reflecting on resurrection and new life, perhaps because we have recently moved and everything is new. It is sort of a resurrection for us. And so in thinking about resurrection, it is helpful to be mindful that although resurrection always happens in one way or another, resurrection also happens in its own time and at its own pace and there is nothing much we can do about it except bide our time and wait for it to happen -- and then enjoy.
God is always in charge of all resurrections and God has chosen, it seems to me, to allow them to come upon us gradually but never unexpectedly. Spring comes, not all of a sudden, but slowly. The leaves do not appear in full bloom one day after budding. They drop from the trees in the fall just as slowly, allowing us to prepare for the coming next season. Would we enjoy it otherwise?
The difficult part for those of us in a hurry is that we sometimes do not understand that resurrection, like all of life, is a journey from one point to the next and that we cannot get from one to the other without making that journey no matter how long and perhaps painful it may be. The pain endured, necessary as it is, also helps us enjoy the resurrection experience even more.
Knowing all that does not make the pain any less or the journey shorter. Spring comes when spring is to come no matter what the groundhog sees or says in February. Good Friday brought Easter Sunday but it did not skip over Saturday.
We know all that, of course. But sometimes, if you are like me, we need reminded. I need my wife to ask, "What's the hurry?" otherwise I might never slow down and enjoy the journey. You too?
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