Yesterday, the Oikos (Young families with young children) fellowship was learning from John Ortberg about the spiritual discipline of slowing down and celebration. He has a very interesting way of diagnosing the problem of our modern society and gives very creative suggestions to help us to cultivate these spiritual disciplines. And today, as I read the article by Ser Choon; I can’t help but to acknowledge that God is speaking to me about a sickness I have (maybe you also have it): the hurried sickness.
I hurried my wife to shop, when I was supposed to spend an undisturbed and uninterrupted date with her today. But we remind each other of what we learnt yesterday and decide to slow down. We stroll along Orchard Road. We eat the food that we like, though we discover that those were really unhealthy food at the evening, we ate them anyway. We buy the things we like, because we want to be happy today without rush. No hurry when come to being happy, else it will go off very soon.
We really enjoy our date. We do house chores together in the morning (I think I did more), we eat oily prata together (which my wife really enjoys), we watch an Oscar movie (Slumdog Millionaire) with popcorns and chilly aircons, we shop (my wife favorite), we eat KFC for lunch (that’s my favorite), and we shop again till we go home to play with our daughter. It is an enjoyable date, with no hurry.
I think God also want us to enjoy Him with no hurry. We can have very different styles of getting intimate with God, but the goal is to enjoy God with no hurry. If you can enjoy God by serving others, by all means take your time to serve with the best you know of with no hurry. If you can enjoy God by read His word, by all means read it slowly and enjoy the articulation of every words from your lip with no hurry. If you can enjoy God by being alone with Him, by all means be alone and have no hurry to return. And if you can enjoy God by doing a lot of things, by all means just do it with no hurry.
Maybe you can try actually chewing the food you eat slowly and enjoy God’s providence, especially with a plate of good fried kway teow. Maybe you can also try queuing behind the longest checkout counter when you next visit the supermarket and enjoy the grace of God.
If you don’t do it today or yesterday, don’t worry, there is no hurry. Try it again tomorrow.
As a father, I learn that I have to enjoy every moment of my daughter growing up. She might be a nuisance when she didn’t know how to walk and needed me to carry her everywhere she went; now she doesn’t want me to carry her because she has learnt how to walk. Now she is learning how to talk and expressing herself, I want to enjoy her frustration and expressing her feeling so directly, because one day she may not want to talk to me anymore. There is really no hurry, enjoy the moment of life now.
I am going off now to enjoy the rest of my night. You should go and enjoy yours too, with no hurry.
HHS…
Abel…
No comments:
Post a Comment