Hurry

“Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”  Luke 19:5

Hurry – Hurry up!  Get going!  Move along!  Faster!  One of the ubiquitous elements of our lives is hurry.  We are so busy with life that we don’t have time to live.  We are so pressed with schedules and tasks and deadlines that we don’t have time to work.  We are inundated with the demand for instant everything.  James Gleick’s book Faster is an expose of the accelerating pace of nearly everything.  It is simply overwhelming. 

You will find it amusing that the Greek word here is speudo (does this remind you of “speed”).  It describes Zaccheus perfectly.  He runs to get ahead of the crowd.  He scrambles up the tree.  Jesus sees him and tells him to hasten down.  So, he goes as fast as he can.  He rushes to his home to prepare for Jesus’ arrival.  He is the man in a hurry.  But when Jesus arrives, life for Zaccheus changes. 

If you think about the life style of Jesus, you will discover that speudo is never one of his attributes.  Jesus just doesn’t hurry.  He was radically irrelevant about life.  He didn’t seem to worry or hurry about anything.  Why do you suppose that the man on the world’s greatest mission never rushed?

The answer is so obvious that it shocks us.  Jesus is the totally dependent man.  He is just the opposite of our rush to take care of everything.  Jesus is never in a hurry because He is completely committed to God’s care.  And God doesn’t seem to consider “hurry” important either.  Do you suppose that God has a bigger perspective on things?

Of course, there is one (and only one) thing in our lives that requires immediate attention.  There is one “hurry up” thing to do.  “Now is the Day of Salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).  There is only one thing in life that can’t wait.  Get that settled without delay.  Then relax.  You only have to hurry down from the tree once.  The rest of your life can become a journey of peaceful assurance as completely dependent men and women of God.

Today:  How would your life be different today if you really believed that God’s care for you meant you didn’t have to hurry?