“GOOD! Fine! Okay. Not Bad. Rank Rotten!”

How honestly do you answer the routine question, “How’re you doing/going?” How well do you mask how harassed and harangued you are?

My trite polite answers to this passing question are: “Good!” “Cream Crackered (tired) but Well!” Or, if things are frantic, “Stressed and Strung!” This last one usually betrays ‘Hurry Sickness’ (too much on). 

‘Hurry Sickness’ is being so busy or pressured that your ‘presence’ is robbed from the ‘present’, mind and thought drained & distracted from being in the ‘Now’.

Whether you have faith in an ever-present loving Lord, or not, hurry, scurry and flurry lead to worry, dissatisfaction and feeling that life is running away from you.

‘Hurry’ for some is like an addiction, such that, when we’re not overscheduled and constantly chasing our tail, we’re ill at ease. It’s not till some workaholics reach their deathbed that it dawns they were never fully there for their significant others. 

Eugene Peterson said you can’t be busy and pray. His writings are a helpful antidote to the drivenness of Western working life’s magnetic pull.

I’m an activist; I connect with God and feel his presence through active service and a challenging life. I believe you ‘can’ be busy and pray, but that you cannot ‘hurry and pray’.

It’s tragic when we live from holiday to holiday and miss living in between! Sad when we worry about the past or can’t stop thinking about the next thing, and miss really ‘being with’ people and giving them the attention they deserve. We smile, nod and look as if we’re listening to someone when we’re far away. 

For me, disciplined Journaling, prayer and Bible reading are ‘speed bumps’ at daybreak, slowing me down and tuning me into God’s presence and priorities, releasing me from Sleep’s Grace into God’s gift of a new day,

Weekly Sabbath literally means ‘Stop it!’ a day-stop to let the presence of God and loved ones become more real and meaningful. A commandment that God demonstrates the need for in the first chapters of the Bible. 

God describes himself as ‘The Great I Am’. “Lord, teach me to be a human BEING: to live, love, laugh, work, worship, play and pray, with You, moment by moment, day by day. It’s in your loving presence I feel most alive!”