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I hope you’ve had a blessed week. Not long ago, I caught myself doing something rather ridiculous: I was heating up my lunch… and tapping my foot impatiently. Two minutes felt like an eternity. It hit me, if I’m impatient with a microwave, maybe my soul is in more trouble than my schedule.
We live in a world that worships speed. Fast Wi-Fi, fast food, fast results. The problem is, the faster we move, the less we actually live. Our souls don’t move at the speed of Wi-Fi—they move at the speed of relationship.
Pastor and author John Mark Comer (inspired by Dallas Willard) wrote about what he calls “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.” He tells of asking Willard what he must do to become spiritually healthy. Willard paused and said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.”
That phrase has stuck with me: ruthlessly eliminate hurry. It’s a challenge, isn’t it? Especially when life feels like a treadmill that never stops. But hurry doesn’t just make us tired—it makes us less loving. You can’t love well in a hurry. You can’t listen deeply, pray meaningfully, or rest peacefully when your soul is spinning faster than your feet.
Jesus never seemed to be in a hurry. Think about it. People were always rushing to Him—but He never rushed from them. Even when Jairus’s daughter was dying, Jesus stopped to heal a woman who touched His robe. He was fully present, fully attentive, fully at peace.
And then, there’s the Sabbath. The Sabbath is God’s antidote to hurry. When God finished creating the world, He didn’t say, “Now, let’s optimize this system.” No, He rested. Not because He was tired, but because He was satisfied. He set apart the Sabbath as a weekly invitation to stop, to breathe, to delight, and to remember that our worth isn’t in what we produce but in whose we are.
As Adventists, we know this truth deeply—but sometimes, we forget that Sabbath isn’t just a day off; it’s a lifestyle of trust. It’s choosing to believe that the world will keep spinning even if we don’t answer that email, fold that laundry, or check that notification. It’s God saying, “You can stop now, I’ve got this.”
To rest is to resist. It’s to resist the lie that your value depends on your productivity. It’s to resist the pull of a culture that equates busyness with importance. It’s to resist the noise long enough to hear the whisper of Jesus saying, “Come to Me, and I will give you rest.”
So maybe this week, we can practice a bit of holy slowness. Take a walk without your phone. Eat a meal without multitasking. Pray without checking the time. Let the Sabbath be a sanctuary in time, not just a box on the calendar. And as we do, may we rediscover the joy of being still and knowing that He is God.
Blessings, David Peñate
