Trading Hurry For The Gift Of Presence

“They came to Jericho. And as he was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a large crowd, Bartimaeus (the son of Timaeus), a blind beggar, was sitting by the road. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many warned him to keep quiet, but he was crying out all the more, “Have mercy on me, Son of David!” Jesus stopped and said, ‘Call him.’” (Mark 10:46-49, CSB)

“Now a woman suffering from bleeding for twelve years… Having heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his clothing… Immediately Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ But he was looking around to see who had done this. The woman, with fear and trembling, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. ‘Daughter,’ he said to her, ‘your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be healed from your affliction.’” (Mark 5:25, 27, 30, 32-34, CSB)

We all know the feeling. We’re finally in the middle of something that matters, and then something or someone interrupts. A phone call. A knock. A need we didn’t schedule. We tighten up. That person, that moment, starts to feel like a thief, stealing time that belonged to something else.

Now think about Jesus. He seems to have never met an interruption he didn’t like. A blind man cries out from the roadside, and Jesus stops (Mark 10:46-52). A desperate woman reaches out and touches the edge of his robe in the middle of a crowd, and Jesus turns toward her instead of past her (Mark 5:25-34). Again and again, we never find Jesus hurried or resentful. By some divine providence, the interruptions never threatened his mission. The interruptions were his mission.

There’s an old story about a seventeenth-century monastery cook named Nicolas Herman—known to history as Brother Lawrence. He spent his days doing ordinary, unglamorous work—cooking meals, repairing shoes. Yet he became known for one thing: refusing to let any moment matter less than another. He wrote, “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees.”

That line should stop us. He wasn’t saying the kitchen stood quiet. He’s saying his heart remained present despite the noise around it. He didn’t divide his life into sacred time and ordinary time, prayer and work. Every moment was an opportunity to live presently with God.

This is the shift hurry keeps us from making. Think about it: hurry isn’t really about the speed with which we move. Hurry is a posture of our hearts—a refusal to be where we actually are. We can rush through a room and still be present to the person in it. And we can sit perfectly still while our minds are a thousand miles away, replaying the task we were interrupted from.

So here’s the question to carry for today: when something interrupts your plans, how will you respond? Will you treat it as a thief or as an invitation? The person standing in front of you—your child, coworker, the stranger who needs directions—is not stealing time from you. In that moment, they may be God’s intended recipient of it, the very opportunity God has for you to redeem the time (Ephesians 5:16).

We don’t need fewer interruptions to live the full life God offers us. We need hearts that are present, willing, and watchful for his divine purposes. Remember the words of missionary martyr Jim Elliot, “Wherever you are, be all there.”

Prayer:

Lord, so much of my hurry isn’t really about our schedules. It’s about our hearts refusing to be where we are. Like Brother Lawrence in his kitchen, teach us to meet you in the noise, not just in the quiet. When the next interruption comes, help us see it as Christ saw the blind man on the road and the woman in the crowd—not as a thief, but as an opportunity to live and serve according to your purposes.