On Hurry and Worry: Ecclesiastes 2:18—3:8 - 13th Sunday after Pentecost

One of the highlights of my vacation last week was simply this: I wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything.

Most mornings, I’m in a hurry from the moment I wake up. I hate getting stuck behind school buses or in the traffic jam that occurs at the intersection of Leechburg Road and Route 56.

When I get to the office, there’s emails and phone calls to return, hospital visits, sermons, bulletins, meetings, and always, the unexpected.

Church life is busy, and I’m thankful for that. A quiet church is a dead church.

But when I’m busy, I hurry. And that isn’t just when I’m working. I tend to hurry when I’m doing housework and running errands. I hurry when I eat.

I hurry because I worry that there won’t be enough time to get everything done that needs to be done.

Are you like that?

Think about it: what percentage of a given day are you in a hurry?

To be fair, some jobs demand hurry. I don’t want to wait two hours for a ten-minute oil change. If I’m deathly ill, I don’t want to be in an ambulance driven by someone going fifteen miles below the speed limit. In these jobs, hurry requires both skill and teamwork

But everyday hurry isn’t a virtue. It’s a vice. It’s a race against a clock that never stops ticking. It’s a vain attempt to minimize times of difficulty and prolong times of ease. But time is not an enemy to defeat with hurry.

For as much as we say, “I don’t have time for this” or “I don’t have time for that,” the Bible says, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.”

But must there be a time for dying and killing?

We could all do with more laughing and less weeping, more love instead of hate, more peace instead of war. Why must there a time for bad things under heaven?

But the message here is that all times under heaven, both good and bad, are sacred. God draws near when evil afflicts us. God uses both good times and bad times for good purposes. God works in every season to draw you closer to himself; to transform your heart, your mind, and your attitudes; to strengthen and mature your faith.

When you are staring evil in the face, you are still standing on holy ground because God is standing there with you. There, you will receive divine strength to endure and overcome. Even in the worst of times, God will send people to minister God’s grace to you. You may encounter people God has sent to you so you can minister to them.

Ask anyone who has faith, and they’ll tell you that they were drawn closer to Christ not in the absence of affliction but in the midst of it. Moreover, hardships teach you gratitude, so that when times are good, you see God’s hand in them. Hope is born in the remembrance of God‘s faithfulness in the past.

When you hurry, you lose the sacredness of these times. When you hurry, are not holding God’s hand. Hurry is a sign that worry and fear are running your life. When you hurry, you are not present to the people around you. You aren’t paying attention to what God is doing. When you hurry, you lose focus. You become careless. You make mistakes. Instead of helping yourself, you’re hurting yourself and others. When you hurry, you’re throwing God’s grace away.

Jesus was never in a hurry. If anyone had a reason to hurry, it was Jesus, because he knew his ministry was going to be brief—only three years. Thousands of people needed him, often following him and his disciples so closely that they had no time for eat or sleep. Still, Jesus never hurried. Yes, he awakened before dawn to pray and often prayed deep into the night, but he got enough sleep. He took naps. He ate meals. He kept the Sabbath. And Jesus made people wait for him, including his closest friends, Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. it was not because he didn’t care. He was human, just as we are. He had limitations. He had needs that must be met. He was not going to be everything to everyone, because pleasing man was not his focus. God was his focus. Jesus trusted that God would provide time for everything that mattered.

Hurry and worry have no place in the Christian life, because time is not something to be controlled. Time is to be lived in God. It’s the devil who tells you that there isn’t time for church, that there isn’t time for self, that there isn’t time for rest, and there isn’t time for God. There’s an old saying that if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy.

But “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” The times for all these things, good and bad, lay the foundation for eternity. No matter what the time or the season, God is near, and God is not silent. There will always be time for God and the things that matter. Time is not the enemy. Time is the gift of closeness to God. Slow down. Be still. Be present to the God who is present with you.