So you accepted the invitation to spend a few months in a caravan of RVs orbiting a couple of hundred miles above earth’s recent mayhem. Your friends are in the RV just ahead of you at the same altitude. You’d like to catch up with them, dock, and play some board games while you watch a couple of sunsets together before undocking and bedtime. How do you catch up with them?
You have rockets on the front and back of your RV for just such a purpose. As you would expect, the rear rockets thrust you forward, and the front rockets propel you backward. Common sense tells you to fire the rear rockets to catch up with your friends. Instead, you find yourself in a higher orbit losing ground (so to speak) on their RV. So, opposite your own judgment, you fire the front rockets to “slow down.” But now you find yourself at a slightly lower altitude, moving faster, catching up with your friends. You have to decelerate to speed up. (I know it seems wrong. That’s the point. But look it up; it’s true.)
In the first Psalm, everyone wants to be like a tree planted by streams of water: fruitful, enduring, prospering. The wicked races toward it—would in fact instruct others how to obtain it—but never arrives. The blessed man slows every other pursuit to meditate on Yahweh’s law, and finds himself docked with all that eluded his misguided would-be guide.
Those who fulfil their life’s purpose are constantly decelerating from earth’s pace. Jesus rose up a great while before day, departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. Martin Luther is said to have committed three hours daily to prayer because he could never accomplish his business otherwise. John Wesley prepared to meet his days with mornings in prayer, bible study, and a run in the woods.
God wills to take us where our power can’t.
To a week pursuing God’s will by trusting his means for getting us there.