Stark: Slowing Down the Pace of Life

Commentary by HottyToddy.com contributor Bill Stark.
While on vacation recently, I decided to go to the pool behind the cluster of villas where we were staying.
The tranquil pool was surrounded by beautiful trees draped with Spanish moss.
The path to the pool was a set of square concrete steps sitting atop the ground. The steps were only about 3-4 inches apart and since my step was about 2-3 feet long, I found my bare feet regularly landing between the concrete steps onto the sharp corners.
It was an frustrating and painful exercise to walk to this lovely pool.
Yet on the 3rd day I found out what the problem was.
I was walking too fast.
I discovered that if I slowed down my pace, my feet would land (magically!) at the center of each concrete pad.

Why was I walking so fast on my way to the pool? I was on vacation!
Was the pool going to disappear?
Was the water going to drain out before I got there?
I have found that many of us live life like this. We race here and there, as though we were chasing the wind. Sometimes I am too busy to stop to help someone with a flat tire, to help an older person load their car at Lowes or to stop and open a door for a large family.
The wisest person to ever live, King Solomon, put it this way in Ecclesiastes 4: 4-6: “And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Fools fold their hands and ruin themselves. Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.”
The Hebrew word for “chasing” means “longing or striving.”
So, what do we long for?
What are we striving for?
Position, power, prestige, money, reputation, ambition, accomplishment?
Jesus once said “few things are needed or indeed only one”….and the one is Him – Jesus Christ.
God simply wants us to come to Him. To slow down, pause, seek Him, to focus on Him even in the midst of a busy life….to find rest, purpose, joy and delight in Him alone.
Bill Stark is a Greenville, Mississippi native who graduated from Ole Miss in 1983 with a BA degree in Journalism. Bill married his college sweetheart, Starwyn Strickland, of Brazil, Mississippi, and they have three children, including twins Mary Catherine and Ellen and son Will. He currently resides in Alpharetta, Georgia. Email Bill Stark at bill.stark@cloudwalk.org