The Speed of Love

Life moves at a torrid pace. I’ve heard people say, “the older you get the faster it goes.” Our calendars are full. Our commitments are demanding. Our world is weary. All because we’re after something, something good we think, better we hope… rest or joy or love? Maybe that’s what we’re after, love. Maybe the apostle Paul gave our heart’s longing a voice when he wrote, “now these three remain, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.”

But the social data is not encouraging. Some say, culturally speaking, we’re getting meaner. In the frantic pace and the social fatigue we end up looking to a weekend or a vacation, we wait for a new season or a different opportunity, we pursue the elusive day when everything will settle down into healthier rhythms, or a more balanced life or simply less stress. And in order to get everything done by the weekend or the vacation we fill our calendars more full. Only to find again all of our looking and waiting and pursuing never seem to get us what we set out to find, love.

What if how we get there is the getting there? What if the elusive future is actually meant to be a present reality? What if, “how you spend your day is how you spend your life.”

Kosuke Koyama, in a book titled Three Mile an Hour God, put it like this: “Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk, and therefore the speed the love of God walks.”

Koyama is inviting us to slow down from the hurried pace of our lives with its social angst in order to be present to one another in love. “Love has its speed.”

This fall as we launch the all things new anniversary celebration into another season of ministry we want to invite you to go with us at the speed of love. We’ll walk through Old Testament narratives paying attention to God’s speed in the fractured lives of our ancient mothers and fathers as we seek to live at God’s speed in our lives now. It’s the speed of love: unhurried, patient, attentive to ourselves and each other in grace.

— Jon Brown