In leadership and management the talk is about the “tyranny of the urgent” - when you put off doing the most important thing because you are too busy with taking care of details around you. Companies spend millions of dollars investing in training leaders how to keep from “being busy at the expense of being productive.” Why are we surprised at that? Look at the way we live! Is an unhurried life possible? Or, to put it another way, “Is it possible to live a productive life in an unhurried manner?”

I think most people think that when I speak of an “unhurried life,” I mean one that is laid back and almost lazy. In America to be successful is to appear to be “busy”, especially when you live in the suburbs. There are more good things, good in and of themselves, to be involved in as suburbanites that we try to be involved in everything possible. We end up feeling like we live life on a treadmill. The more I think about it, the more I have come to realize that “busyness” - living in a hurry - is the easiest thing we do. In fact, it takes more diligence to live an unhurried life than to live at seventy miles per hour day in and day out. Recently I realized that for the past few months I have unreflectively lived a very hurried life. I was thinking about this when my mother pointed it out to me, and I knew it was time to slow down, take inventory and use available resources to figure out how to get off the treadmill.

Jesus got a lot done, but he never seemed to be in a hurry. He had time to work and time to build meaningful relationships with the people around him. When he was with people he was “in the moment.” He was focused on them and not rushed to get on to next big ministry. With only three years to do his life’s work, he got through it with integrity. So forget all your theology for a minute and just look at Jesus. The way he lived his life should serve as an example to us. His was an “unhurried life.” He lived in our humanity with all the limitations of time and space. He had the same twenty-four hours that we do, and yet his pace seems to be, well—human. Jesus reminds me that ultimately the “Jones” are not the model for my life—Jesus is, and I will never be happy and holy unless I am willing to look to him as the model for my life and not the latest book of how productive I can be.

The second place I check when my navigation is off and I am feeling rushed by the cares of the world is Eugene Peterson. In Subversive Spirituality, he is brutal when it comes to busyness. When asked the question: “How does busyness affect our spiritual lives?” He says this, “Busyness is the enemy of spirituality. It is essentially laziness. It is doing the easy thing instead of the hard thing. It is filling our time with our own action instead of paying attention to God’s actions. It is taking charge.” Ouch! Busyness is basically an unreflective life. A life lived at break-neck speed is a life that is not asking the important questions like—“Why am I here?” “What is my purpose?” “Who are the people that need me the most?” Life that is lived in a hurry, always running from one thing to the next, is the surest way to never progress in the gospel!

Development of the soul - a well-lived life with God, building relationships with people and work are the hardest things we ever do. It is a pilgrimage that demands constant attention and constant questioning. The models of success we see flaunted in the culture and the ones we see written across Scripture are simply not the same. When we get busy, whether at work, church or with anything for that matter, what always suffers are the relationships of people closest to us—our family and those people around us. Yesterday, my son’s friend drove our four-wheeler through a chain link fence. It is only by God’s grace he wasn’t hurt badly. (And that he didn’t tear up my four-wheeler!) He did mess up the gear shifter though, and when I went by the house today, my neighbor, who is an airplane mechanic, was fixing it. I have lived across the street from him for six years and today was the first time I ever engaged him in authentic conversation. Why? I am too busy! Am I so busy that I can’t even know my neighbor? Is that what I learn from Jesus? Is that the gospel model want to leave to my children?

I don’t much think that an unhurried life is much of an ideal any more. If not, who will model a life well-lived in a culture that is moving so fast it has to have a nervous breakdown if something doesn’t change? I wonder what would happen if there was a community of folk who decided to examine their lives and, with God’s help, chose to live at a human pace. I don’t know. Would they be thought of as weird? Maybe. Would they be thought of as lazy? Some would. Would people begin to wonder how this was possible and ask how? Absolutely! It would be the most radical thing to ever hit suburbia America.

An unhurried life will only come out of reflection and diligence. It will be far easier to stay busy or say it is a luxury you do not have to actively reflect on the pace and priority of your life. Peterson is right; if we chose to stay busy we are indeed lazy.