Click here for an infographic on US culture and instant gratification which is directly applicable to 'I want it all and I want it now' attitudes globally focusing on the extent to which the speed of the internet feeds our addiction to the instant:
"In a world of high speed browsing, no one waits for answers. But a desire for speedy information has made Americans impatient for just about everything."
This infographic has been created by Tony Shin and his team. They have many others, several of which process information about internet usage in a stark and stimulating fashion.
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Queen - I Want It All.
Showing posts with label speed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speed. Show all posts
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
Sunday, 4 March 2012
Why are we waiting?
Have you ever observed people waiting at a bus stop? Some people are entirely focused on the experience of waiting, constantly checking their watch to see how much time has gone by and how late the bus in question is in arriving. Others take the opportunity to look around them to observe other people and the area in which they are waiting, perhaps to notice things that they would not otherwise see. Which, I wonder, are you most like?
Many things in our world have become instant. Today we can connect to people, information and misinformation with a few mouse clicks in a way that was simply not possible a few years ago. But we shouldn’t assume that such changes make us any wiser or that the benefits we can gain by waiting have been eradicated by the speed with which our society moves.
Hebrews 11. 1 - 2 tells us that:
“To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. It was by their faith that people of ancient times won God's approval.”
In other words, faith is about waiting, and Abraham, who we heard about in our Old Testament reading (Genesis 17. 1 – 7, 15, 16) is held up in Hebrews 11 as a hero of faith precisely because he was someone who waited:
“It was faith that made Abraham obey when God called him to go out to a country which God had promised to give him. He left his own country without knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as a foreigner in the country that God had promised him. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who received the same promise from God. For Abraham was waiting for the city which God has designed and built, the city with permanent foundations.
It was faith that made Abraham able to become a father, even though he was too old and Sarah herself could not have children. He trusted God to keep his promise. Though Abraham was practically dead, from this one man came as many descendants as there are stars in the sky, as many as the numberless grains of sand on the seashore.” (Hebrews 11. 8 – 13 GNB)
“Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that — heaven country. You can see why God is so proud of them, and has a City waiting for them.” (Hebrews 11. 13 – 16 The Message)
Abraham waited and was commended for his faith being held up as an example for all of us who come after him. Why? We can ask the question in the song traditionally sung by those waiting in queues - why are we waiting?
W.H. Vanstone is a theologian who has written particularly profoundly about the experience and he gives at least two answers.
Firstly, he wrote, in The Stature of Waiting, that as we wait “the world discloses its power of meaning – discloses itself in its heights and its depths, as wonder and terror, as blessing and threat.” We become, so to speak, “the sharer with God of a secret – the secret of the world’s power of meaning.”
When we experience moments of seeing the world as “a wonderful terror or a terrifying wonder,” we become “a point at which something in the world is not only registered but understood, experienced, recognized.” Because we are in the world seeing it as it really is, the world no longer “merely exists” but is “understood, appreciated, welcomed, feared, felt”; “the world is received not as it is received by a camera or a tape-recorder but rather with the power of meaning with which it is received by God.”
Our role within creation is to articulate and name the meaning of the world which God has created. As James Thwaites has suggested the creation is crying out (Romans 8: 19 - 22):
“for its goodness to be fully realised and fully released. The creation cannot be good apart from the sons and daughters because we alone were given the right to name it; we are the image bearers who were made to speak moral value and divine intent into it. We were created to draw forth the attributes, nature and power of God in all things.”
The world and its meaning cannot be understood and appreciated quickly or lightly - it takes time and experience, observation and reflection – and so we wait. We wait like those people at the bus stop who take the opportunity to look around them to observe other people and the area in which they are waiting to notice things that they would not otherwise see.
Vanstone also wrote in Love's Endeavour, Love's Expense: “So it is with the love of God. For the completion of its work, and therefore its own triumph, it must wait upon the understanding of those who receive it. The love of God must wait for the recognition of those who have power to recognise … Recognition of the love of God involves, as it were, the forging of an offering: the offering is the coming-to-be of understanding: only where this understanding has come to be has love conveyed its richest blessing and completed its work in triumph.”
God waits for us; waits for our recognition, understanding and response to his love. His love is written in to his creation and his purposes are being worked out through history. Paul writes in Romans 1. 19 & 20 that:
God waits for us; waits for our recognition, understanding and response to his love. His love is written in to his creation and his purposes are being worked out through history. Paul writes in Romans 1. 19 & 20 that:
“the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being.”
We need to come to a point where we see this for ourselves. Instead, as Paul writes in that passage from Romans, we have often trivialized ourselves into silliness and confusion so that there is neither sense nor direction left in our lives. We pretend to know it all, but are actually illiterate regarding the real meaning of life and the love of God within human history.
Recognition of the love of God involves, as Vanstone states, “the forging of an offering.” That is what Abraham did, he offered himself by obeying when God called him to go out to the country which God had promised to give him. He offered himself to God by leaving his own country without knowing where he was going and by living as a foreigner in the country that God had promised him. The offering which we make to God reveals the extent to which we have recognised and responded to his love. It is “only where this understanding has come to be” that love has “conveyed its richest blessing and completed its work in triumph.”
We are changed by this recognition and this response. For Abraham, this change was acknowledged by a change of name for him and Sarah and by the act of circumcision – outward signs of an inward grace. For us, as Christians, the outward sign of the inward grace is the act of baptism; the public declaration of faith in the forgiveness held out by Jesus and the enacting of that cleansing by dying to our old way of life as the water goes over us and rising to a new way of life as we emerge from under the water.
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The Staple Singers - I'll Take You There.
Monday, 1 August 2011
Ready, steady, slow
Ready, steady, slow. Hit the ground kneeling. Do nothing to change your life. Discovering what happens when you stop. These are all titles or phrases from publications by our Bishop, Stephen Cottrell, in which he asks questions such as, when was the last time you had a real day off? Ditched the 'to do' lists? Switched off the phone? Had a lie-in? Sat in the bath until the water went cold?
Most of us live at break-neck speed. Busy lives - work, family, friends, endless tasks - leave us with little time to sleep, never mind stopping and reflecting. We urgently need to stop imagining everything is so urgent. We need to learn to slow down, Bishop Stephen writes, and stop ... and breathe. I could certainly do with taking that message on board, although it is easier said than done. Even Bishops, given their busy schedules, could benefit from the practice and not just the theory!
August is one point in the year when it may seem slightly easier to stop and reflect, although school holidays and holidays per se are not without their stresses and strains. What a good holiday should do, however, is take us out of our usual routine and away from the constant notification of new tasks that characterizes our working lives. Even this is becoming more difficult to achieve as mobiles and the internet enable us to be contacted virtually wherever we happen to be.
Isaiah 30.15 - "In returning and rest you shall be saved" – is one passage that Bishop Stephen quotes. What kind of rest will you experience this summer and will it save you? The letter to the Hebrews suggests that we are made for rest; that the purpose of salvation is to enter into the experience that God had of resting on the seventh day: “… there still remains for God’s people a rest like God’s resting on the seventh day. For those who receive that rest which God promised will rest from their own work, just as God rested from his. Let us, then, do our best to receive that rest, so that no one of us will fail …” (Hebrews 4. 9-11)
Our summer breaks can be pointers to or reminders of this greater (eternal) rest that we can experience in God, perhaps as we trust him more fully with our lives or ultimately as we enter eternity. In an article for our parish magazine, I've asked the folk at St John's Seven Kings to reflect on how we can be saved by rest as they (hopefully) take some kind of well-earned summer break? Although that is the pot calling the kettle black, I will try to as well. It may even be that we can learn to manage our busyness and business differently in future as a result.
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The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon.
Most of us live at break-neck speed. Busy lives - work, family, friends, endless tasks - leave us with little time to sleep, never mind stopping and reflecting. We urgently need to stop imagining everything is so urgent. We need to learn to slow down, Bishop Stephen writes, and stop ... and breathe. I could certainly do with taking that message on board, although it is easier said than done. Even Bishops, given their busy schedules, could benefit from the practice and not just the theory!
August is one point in the year when it may seem slightly easier to stop and reflect, although school holidays and holidays per se are not without their stresses and strains. What a good holiday should do, however, is take us out of our usual routine and away from the constant notification of new tasks that characterizes our working lives. Even this is becoming more difficult to achieve as mobiles and the internet enable us to be contacted virtually wherever we happen to be.
Isaiah 30.15 - "In returning and rest you shall be saved" – is one passage that Bishop Stephen quotes. What kind of rest will you experience this summer and will it save you? The letter to the Hebrews suggests that we are made for rest; that the purpose of salvation is to enter into the experience that God had of resting on the seventh day: “… there still remains for God’s people a rest like God’s resting on the seventh day. For those who receive that rest which God promised will rest from their own work, just as God rested from his. Let us, then, do our best to receive that rest, so that no one of us will fail …” (Hebrews 4. 9-11)
Our summer breaks can be pointers to or reminders of this greater (eternal) rest that we can experience in God, perhaps as we trust him more fully with our lives or ultimately as we enter eternity. In an article for our parish magazine, I've asked the folk at St John's Seven Kings to reflect on how we can be saved by rest as they (hopefully) take some kind of well-earned summer break? Although that is the pot calling the kettle black, I will try to as well. It may even be that we can learn to manage our busyness and business differently in future as a result.
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The Kinks - Sunny Afternoon.
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