I came across this lovely reflection....I dont know anything about the author, but he sure hit the truth! originally published by Lawrence Denef
The Three Mile an Hour God
by
Lawrence Denef (referring to Kosuke Kayama's famous term).
"A while ago I was in Tokyo for a Lutheran World Federation conference on "Mission in the City." The crowds in the streets, at the airports, on the subways, were like those in Ottawa on the first of July. One was literally shoved into and out of buses and buildings. Often we were able to see only the blur of persons in motions; we saw no faces.
In his opening remarks, the keynote speaker at the conference, a Japanese theologian, asked us to reflect on the speed at which we are living.
"The context in which most persons live is fast-moving urban life, with its noise, its hustle and bustle, its dominant impersonal relationships," he noted.
"People no longer see one another with faces, but as numbers and replaceable units in productive processes and systems."
After a pause, he contrasted our speed with God's pace. "Our God," he said, "is a three-mile-an-hour God."
That is the speed at which humans walk. That is the speed at which Jesus wended his way through Galilee -- touching the ill, chatting with widows, pausing in marketplaces to observe children at play, plucking grain in the fields on a sabbath day.
"The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath," he said. "Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it," he said. "Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Stand up and take your mat and walk'?" he said.
We were created in the image of a three-mile-an-hour God, and we have been called to be partners in ministry with a three-mile-an-hour God.
There will be no growth among us unless we stop running: no increase in understanding, no growth in faith, no sight for the blind, no help for the poor, no compassion for the outcast (and, for that matter, no increase in the numbers of the faithful) -- unless we stop running.
This world on the run needs people who are moving slowly enough to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice; people who are moving slowly enough to notice smiles of joy and tears of sorrow; People who are moving slowly enough to reach out to those in pain, to comfort those in suffering, to offer hope to those in despair.
An amazing observation! May we slow down and walk along with Jesus!
P.S. oddly I found out that Kosuke Kayama, passed away in a hospital very near to where I live. Since he was from Japan and I live in New England, I find that amazing!
photo taken in Catskill, New York
