Doing Life at Breakneck Speeds

I recently vied for a coveted "Mom-of-the-Year" award when I took my tween daughter to a concert where her absolute favorite artist was performing.  Truth be told, my husband and I felt that the trip was well-deserved as she has sat back and graciously watched her brother receive a plethora of trips, gifts, and attention due to his sickness.  I wouldn't trade that special time with her for anything.  I was surrounded by thousands of young girls singing their hearts out about twiddling their thumbs and doing things on purpose -- just Google "Sabrina Carpenter" and you'll see what I'm talking about!

As we made our way to Charlotte that Friday afternoon, I wondered if my little fuel-sipping Prius was going to sprout wings and start to fly.  I was blown away by the breakneck speeds that people were driving down the interstate, giving no attention to speed limits, construction zones, or merging traffic.  To keep from getting run over, I felt the need to keep up with the mass of humanity heading west along Interstate-40 that day.

It was way too easy to get drafted into the speeds that everyone else was driving.  I didn't leave my house that day with the intentions of driving 90 85 80 mph.  Unfortunately, the environment around me set my pace.  The speed of those in neighboring lanes became the standard of what I decided to adjust my pace to.  I was merely doing what everyone else was doing.  To do anything else would have been ridiculous.  To do anything else would have gone against the flow.  To risk not sounding too "churchy", it would have been counter-cultural.

Isn't that the way life is?  We don't set out with the intentions of trying to keep up with everyone else, but before you know it, our lives are resembling an interstate highway on a Friday afternoon.  We unintentionally let the world tell us how many cars we need, how many hours we need to work, how many ball teams our kids need to be on, how many designer handbags we need.  And because we weren't intentional about being counter-cultural, we get sucked in every time.  We set our pace to the world's pace.  Unfortunately, the world's pace turns out to be futile most of the time.  The world's pace can often times be dangerous.

We try to make ourselves feel better by acknowledging that at least we're not driving as fast as the guy in the sports car that is dangerously weaving through traffic at speeds that clearly exceed 100 miles per hour.  That guy always makes us all feel a little better.  There's always "that guy" in each of our lives that we can compare ourselves to.  However, I don't think that's the One that we're supposed to hold the mirror of our lives up to.

I'm reminded of wise King Solomon and the words he was inspired to pen in Ecclesiastes:

Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man's envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind.

Ecclesiastes 4:4-6 (ESV)

I think if Solomon was a modern-day teacher, he would encourage us to sit back and take an assessment of the motives that drive us.  He would pass out a fill-in-the-blank test with a few short answer questions thrown in for good measure that would ask those difficult "why" questions that would convict our hearts about the amount of time we spend "striving after the wind."  Solomon was wise.  He would know that a multiple-choice test would be too easy for us to zip through and spend no time actually reflecting on these important things.    

You see, wise old Solomon had been there and done that in his own life.  He wrote from his own experiences.  His life had been preoccupied with doing more, amassing more, knowing more, but in the end, he realized it was all in vain.  He realized that through it all, the pursuit of God was the only thing that truly mattered.

Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 2:11 (ESV)

Once the sting of Solomon's assessment wore off, I think he would give us some pointers on navigating life's highway.  All of his pointers would center around this one concept:

Slow down in:

• Your prayer time - Take time to listen more and talk less.
• Your time in the Word - Meditate on it and let it soak in before you run off to the next thing.
• Your worship - Let your heart actually listen to the words you're singing.  Let them speak to you, rather than you merely speaking them.
• Your schedule - Prioritize the Sabbath and let the rest of your week build on it, instead of it being the other way around.
• Your relationships - Look at people when they talk to you.  Read a book with your kids.  Schedule a date night with your spouse.  Have coffee with an old friend.

I, like Solomon, fail at these things quite frequently.  My prayer is that my little Prius begins to do a better job at making God-directed choices about how fast my life will be traveling.  I will risk being run over by the world for the assurance of knowing that God has been the one to set my speed. 

On this Labor Day, I pray that you will take an honest look at the motives behind your labor and who is determining the pace your life is driven.   If we're merely following the crowd and the pace they are setting, we have succumb to a mere striving after the wind.  That's not the way I want to live.  

I'll be praying for you, will you pray for me, too?