Eric Youngblood: When It's OK To Be Ruthless

  • Tuesday, May 24, 2016
  • Eric Youngblood

At 7:40 a.m. one overcast Friday morning, a spontaneous gladness crept up on me. 

My younger son and I had just taken our seats in the car to head to Fairyland Elementary. I turned the ignition in my 2002 Toyota Camry, with now nearly 260,000 miles on it, and.....it started! Again! As it has, had, and does time and time again! 

As our ride shook off its night’s slumber and roused itself with a stretch and a yawn in preparation of a full day of taxiing, “Thank you Lord that the car started” rose from within me. 

I do not normally think this. 

And while I’m not sure what the vehicle’s opinion on the matter was, I figured this sentiment of gratitude that had just tapped me on the shoulder should star in our morning prayer on the way to school. 

The car starting was a grace on a planet where there is much atrophy, break-down, confusion, and despair.

Something went right in a land where so much goes, well, wrong. 

And of course, realizing that caused other slender and portly gifts to cross one’s mind as well. So as we drove, I enumerated a cast of merely a few normal but needful gifts that our Father had so reliably delivered to us.
 
Gratitude and Franticness are Allergic to Each Other
One reason for this sudden realization of solid goodnesses and simple provisions around me was that I wasn’t rushing. Another rare feature in my waking hours. 

Of course, I suspect the Holy Spirit was commandeering this whole enterprise and gladly so. But my antennae may have been picking up on wavelengths normally on a different frequency, because I was simply not in a hurry. Gratitude and a frantic pace are like Red Sox and Yankees fans. They don’t hang out together if they can help it.

In my momentary discovery, another addendum to my gratitude was inserted; I was thankful that I wasn’t rushing some place.  There was enough space in what promised to be a full day to notice something good.
 
And this thought took my memory by the hand down another corridor where I glanced, in my mind’s eye, at one of those square placards that our Catholic friends at Memorial Hospital have placed directly in our line of sight at the elevators, the space where everyone must wait...it reads, “Have you thanked God today?”

I always appreciate that little prodding. It’s a post-it note in the “real-world” that urges us to give attention to the One who is most-real and whose breath-loaning business and reliable affection is the heartbeat of an active planet. 

“I Just Try Never to Get in A Hurry”
I’d been trying an experiment prior to that moment. A self-imposed restriction. An anti-dote to the venomous, but well-meaning, bad habit of over-crammed schedule-itis I was falling into with regularity. I had imposed a “10 minute of silence” rule at the beginning of each time I was in the car by myself. 

Sometimes I cheated. But for the most part, I was a stickler about it. 

Here’s why. Without effort, like many of you, I can easily have a phone stuck to my ear or be dictating an email, a text, a note or a thought to Siri nearly every moment of the day that I am not meeting with someone. The silence rule didn’t stop that entirely. But it sure limited it. To good effect.

Have you ever just sat there for 10 minutes? 

Multiple times a day? 

Sometimes it’s maddening. But sometimes I’d lean into it and find myself able to breathe deeply. I’d discover the Lord bringing insights and reflections to mind about certain thorny situations. I’d find myself noticing shapes, colors, and textures around me.

“You Must Ruthlessly Eliminate Hurry...”
John Ortberg recollects asking his spiritual mentor, Dallas Willard, the secret to cultivating a healthy spiritual life.
 
Willard, the late sage from University of Southern California, responded succinctly, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” 

Ortberg furiously jotted down the advice, then said, “Okay, what else you got?” 

Willard replied, “That’s it.”

Our own sage of Hinkle, Don Dutton, an elder in our congregation, once similarly told me, “I just try never to get in a hurry.” 

I didn’t ruthlessly eliminate all hurry. But that season of practice did indeed stem the nervous tide of hurry and kept the rush of moments from flooding my attention to the life that our Lord has entrusted to me and to which he has called me. 

And I am thankful for what such a habit worked into me. 

Perhaps you might give it a try sometime. It would work for shorter intervals too, and even with kids in the car. What if the first 5 minutes, everyone was sitting in silence? 

Spooky? Perhaps. But it might produce some divinely sanctioned and propelled sanity and health. 

Ubiquitous Gifts
It’d be swell if we could come to notice what the dying priest at the end of Bernanos’ work Diary of a Country Priest witnessed with satisfying consolation in his own final episode while life slowly snuck away from him. 

An attentive friend perched bedside expresses his regret that the local parish priest won’t make it there to issue the final consolations from the church as the ailing man moves from this world to the next, but the young dying priest, isn’t similarly alarmed. Nearly unable to speak, his final words are formed as a sort of reassuring benediction to himself and to his friend:

 “Does it matter? “Grace is everywhere.”

The everywhere graces, the heavenly favors, the divine surprise parties often greet us when we least expect it and cannot deserve it. 

But of course there is an aspect of this kind to realization that is most apparent to those who decide to carve out seeing space in their lives. 

-----

Eric Youngblood is the senior pastor at Rock Creek Fellowship (PCA) on Lookout Mountain. Please feel free to contact him at eric@rockcreekfellowship.org.

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