Life is fast-too fast. We try our best to keep up only to wear ourselves out and fall further behind. I know some of you might be thinking, “What choice do we have? Everything is moving so fast.” And you’re right—the pace of life today feels almost impossible to keep up with. The deadlines. The expectations. The pressure to stay efficient, productive, available, and always on. But here’s what I’ve come to realize: in our frantic attempt to keep up, we are losing something far more valuable than productivity. We are losing ourselves.
There’s a line written by Thomas Kelly that has been echoing in my heart for years, a sentence I return to again and again like a well-worn path through the woods. He wrote: “We regret a well-intentioned but feverish over-busyness… and we wish they would not blur the beauty of their souls by fast motion.” Every time I read those words, I feel something shift inside me—a recognition, a lament, a longing for something different.
If anything describes the world we live in today, it’s fast motion. We’re moving so quickly that the beauty of our own souls gets blurred. We don’t mean for it to happen. Most of us are genuinely trying to do good things, to fulfill our responsibilities, to show up for the people who need us. But somewhere in all the rushing, something essential gets lost. The very essence of our lives—the richness, the depth, the quiet knowing of who we are and whose we are—begins to fade.
The Silent Enemy of A Beautiful Life
I’ve become convinced that the greatest enemy of a beautiful, grounded, grace-filled life is not doubt or moral failure. It’s hurry. It’s the constant pressure to keep going, keep producing, keep chasing the next thing on an endless list that never seems to get shorter.
Hurry sneaks into our lives so quietly we barely notice it arriving. It comes disguised as responsibility, wrapped in obligation, reinforced by the expectations of others and the expectations we place on ourselves. We tell ourselves we have no choice. We tell ourselves it’s just for this season, just until things settle down. But the seasons change and the hurry remains, and before we even realize what’s happened, we’re living a life we can barely feel.
And here’s what I’ve noticed: when hurry takes over, something essential disappears. Gratitude. When we move too fast, gratitude evaporates. And when gratitude evaporates, the soul begins to starve. We may still be functioning—still checking boxes, still meeting deadlines, still showing up—but something inside us grows hollow and thin.
The Cost We Don’t Calculate
This pace we’re living at, this relentless need to rush through our days, costs us more than we realize. It costs our health—we’re exhausted, anxious, stretched thin, trying to push through a pace our bodies were never created to endure. We fuel ourselves with caffeine and adrenaline, wondering why we can’t sleep at night, why we feel perpetually on edge, and in a hurry.
It costs our relationships. We’re present in body but absent in spirit, distracted and preoccupied, unable to fully show up for the people we love. Our children try to tell us about their day and we’re mentally composing tomorrow’s email. Our spouse reaches for connection and we’re already three steps ahead, thinking about what needs to happen next. We sit across from friends but we’re not really there—we’re somewhere else, always somewhere else.
It also costs us our sense of wonder. When we’re always rushing to the next thing, we lose the ability to be amazed by this thing. We miss what’s right in front of us—the way light falls through the window, the unexpected kindness of a stranger, the small miracle of breath entering and leaving our bodies. Life becomes a blur of tasks rather than a series of sacred moments.
And perhaps most devastating of all, it costs our connection to God. The soul was never meant to live at the speed of a screen or at the pace of constant urgency. A hurried life is a spiritually malnourished life. We move so fast we can’t feel the presence of God or the beauty of our own existence. Prayer becomes one more item on the to-do list. Scripture reading gets squeezed into the margins. We lose the ability to hear the still, small voice because we’ve forgotten how to be still.
The Way Jesus Walked
One of the most striking things about Jesus, when you really pay attention to the gospel accounts, is this: he was never in a hurry. Even when urgent messages came—”Come quickly, your friend is dying”—Jesus moved at his own pace, in rhythm with the Father. He moved slowly enough to notice people, to welcome interruptions, to hear the cries others ignored. He sat at tables long enough for real conversation to unfold. He saw beauty where others saw inconvenience. He stopped for the one person in the crowd who needed healing while everyone else was trying to hurry him along.
Jesus lived in rhythm with grace. He walked at a pace where gratitude was not an afterthought but a way of being. He gave thanks before breaking bread. He withdrew regularly to pray. He made space for silence, for solitude, for the unhurried presence of his Father. If we want to live beautifully—if we want to live the Way—we must learn his pace. We must learn to walk as he walked, not just in terms of our ethics or our beliefs, but in the actual rhythm and speed of our days.
The Rhythm of Grace and Gratitude
If hurry is one of the great enemies of the beautiful life, then the way of grace and gratitude is the path to wholeness and a more beautiful life. Gratitude has this remarkable power to slow us down, to anchor us in the present moment, to reconnect us to what is real and true and good. Gratitude awakens us to what is here—not what might happen tomorrow or what we failed to accomplish yesterday, but what is here, now, in this moment.
Gratitude reconnects us to God, to ourselves, and to the people around us. It pulls us out of the anxiety of hurry and plants our feet firmly in the reality of grace as gift. Because when we practice gratitude, we’re essentially saying: I am not in control of everything. I did not create this moment. I am receiving. I am being given to. And in that posture of receiving, something inside us softens and opens.
The beautiful thing is that gratitude doesn’t require a dramatic shift or a complete overhaul of our lives. It begins with something as simple as noticing and saying, “Thank you.” Thank you for this morning light streaming through the window. Thank you for this breath that came without my asking. Thank you for this moment, this gift of being alive. Thank you for the person beside me. Thank you for the ordinary miracle of another day.
When we practice gratitude—when we slow down enough to notice and name the gifts—the world slows and softens. Our hearts open. Presence returns. And beauty, real soul-deep beauty, becomes visible again. We begin to see that we’ve been surrounded by love and grace all along; we were just moving too fast to notice.
An Invitation to Another Way
Maybe we can’t keep up with the pace of the world. Maybe we were never meant to. Maybe the invitation of the gospel, the invitation of Walking the Way, is not to run faster but to step out of the race altogether. To choose presence over productivity. To choose depth over speed. To choose gratitude over hurry.
The beautiful life—the life Jesus invites us into—is not something we achieve through effort and striving. It’s something we receive. One unhurried, grateful moment at a time. It’s available right now, in this present moment, if we have eyes to see it and hearts slow enough to receive it.
So here’s my invitation to you today, right now, in this moment: Take a breath. A real one—deep and slow. Let your shoulders drop. Feel your feet on the ground. Look around and notice one thing you can be grateful for. And whisper, “Thank you.”
This is the practice. This is the way back home. This is how we begin to live into the rhythm of grace, to find the deep and beautiful life we were created for.
It starts here. It starts now. It starts with slowing down enough to remember who you are and whose you are.
Welcome to the Way.
A Practice for the Week: The Gift of Slowing
So here’s a simple practice — gentle, doable, human:
Pick one moment of your day… and slow it down.
Eat slowly.
Walk slowly.
Speak slowly.
Breathe slowly.
Do it long enough to notice what you’ve been missing.
When you slow down, something beautiful happens:
Your soul finally catches up.
A Question for the Journey
As you walk through this week, carry this question with you:
What is my current pace costing me?
Is it costing you peace?
Connection?
Joy?
Your ability to listen?
Your sense of God’s presence?
Naming the cost is the first step toward reclaiming the beautiful life that is still possible for you — right now, right here, in the ordinary moments of your day.
EnSpirit 