Treating Hurry Sickness

Well, for some people getting away from a stressful and hurried life is almost impossible. Few months ago I was reading a book by John Orteburg called The Life You've Always Wanted and I read a chapter in that book which he entitles an unhurried life. The subtitle goes something like this, the practice of slowing. And when I read that chapter I was just in the formative stages of putting this series together and getting my thinking together about it and I thought this, the topic of that chapter has to find a way into this series somehow. So today as we close out the series on stress that we've been in the past few months, past few weeks, I want to talk about slowing as the ninth key to overcoming and coping with stress. And what I want to talk about today is what I believe is the most clear-cut symptom of stress, probably the most overwhelming, the most common evidence of stress and that is a hurried lifestyle and the need to slow down some. And I really do believe that a hurried lifestyle is like a disease. It's catching and many of us in this room have got it and worse yet we're passing it along to our children. It's endemic in our culture and we're catching and passing along to other people just like you see there. Not only do we have express lanes, we've got super express lanes now. So it's not enough just to be fast, you've got to be faster and many of us have fallen into that trap. Now what I want to do this morning and some of you are going to wonder about this, I'm going to take about the first half of this message to talk about what hurry sickness is. It is a disease. I believe it's an illness. We're passing along to other people. We've caught it from our culture. I want to talk about it and I'm going to spend some time talking about it. In the first half of the message, some of you are going to wonder, does this guy preach from the Bible? Does he ever talk about the Bible? Because I think we will get there. I promise you, but what I want you to see first of all, I think it's very important that we see ourselves, that we see where we are, that we understand the depth to which we have bought into this hurry sickness. It is only if we graphically understand that and describe that, that we will be able to fully understand the scriptural principles that we'll get to in the second half of the message. So, indulge me for a few moments, for a few minutes. I want to really describe what I think we're into and we've bought into in this culture before we find the tremendous contrast with how the Bible portrays our lifestyle, with commands and descriptions of intentional slowing down of our lives. So, let's begin with the diagnosis of hurry sickness. What is the disease anyway? What are we talking about? When we talk about hurry sickness, what is the disease that we're talking about? Let me define it this way. The disease, it's this. Our continuous struggle to accomplish more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time. That's the disease. The disease of hurry sickness is our continuous struggle to participate in more and more things, to participate in more and more events, get more and more done in less and less time. You can see that it's a setup for stress and we really are infected. You don't have to look far to find out how much we have bought into that thinking, how much we're infected with that kind of hurry sickness. The best-selling shampoo in America became the best-selling shampoo in America because it combined shampoo and conditioner and saved people time. They didn't have to do an extra rinse and lather up again. That's how it got to be the best-selling shampoo. The most well-known pizza chain in the United States, the best-selling pizza chain in a couple of years ago, was dominoes and you know how they got there? As their CEO said, we don't sell pizza, we sell delivery. They promised to deliver within 30 minutes or less. So people bought into that. I can get my pizza faster if I order it from this particular company. We had an emergency room in our area just a few years ago that promised in their advertising you come to our hospital in our emergency room, you will be treated within five minutes, guaranteed or you don't have to pay for your treatment. Hurry sickness, that's probably why most people were there. Hurry sickness and they're going to be treated for that. Our fascination with fast food is well-known in this country. But you know in the early stages of fast food you still had to get out of your car, go in, make your order, wait for your order and sit down. So that wouldn't fast enough so we invented the drive-through. You don't have to get out of your car. You can pull in, you can order, you can pull around, get it and eat your meal in the car as God intended fast food to be eaten. Right? We are so enslaved to this hurry sickness. We're the ones who invented express lanes and we have express lanes in the store, we have express lanes in our major city in the highways. You get into a major city like Chicago or New York, you go into an express lane, you don't have to worry with traffic leaving or traffic coming on. You're in the express lane and you can really get it up and go. You don't have to worry about other people coming in in front of you and that kind of thing. We're the people who invented the 10-minute oil change. The one hour film developing and now with digital cameras you don't have to wait an hour, right after you snap the picture you can immediately see what the picture looks like. So we are enslaved to this, we are caught in this web of hurry sickness. And you know a lot of us complain about that. We complain about life being too fast and having to hurry too much. I think really we are enamored with it, we're drawn to it because it makes us feel important, makes us feel needed, makes us feel valuable. And it also keeps us from looking very deeply into our hearts and evaluating what's really going on in our lives. And therein lies the danger. The greatest danger of a hurried lifestyle, of hurry sickness is that we have created an environment for ourselves that is absolutely lethal to a deep relationship with God. And not only that, it's absolutely lethal to a deep relationship with others as well. We are living in, we are bought into a system, we are living in an environment, we have bought into a way of life that is filled with values and pressures and ideas that are exactly the opposite of what the Bible teaches. And it happens so subtly and so gradually that quite often we don't even recognize the damage that's being done to our lives through our hurried lifestyle, hurry sickness. We've got the disease, we don't even recognize the symptoms. In fact I'm convinced that in most of our good Bible believing churches today, the danger is not that we will deny the faith, the danger is that we will become so hurried and preoccupied and distracted that we will settle for a superficial version of our faith. That will start skimming along in our relationship with God. I think that's what will be the spiritual undoing of a lot of us in this day and time. Now I know what some of you were thinking at this point. Some of you were thinking, well, yeah John, that's true in big cities, you know, metropolitan there is not true here, not in Princeton, West Virginia. Okay, if you're not convinced, if some of you are not yet convinced, I want to move on to the symptoms. I want to describe for you a little more fully, a little more in detail the symptoms of hurry sickness and I think some of you may realize, hey I've got this, you know, I've got this disease and didn't even realize it. What are the symptoms of hurry sickness? What does it look like to be consumed with a hurried stressful lifestyle? Number one, symptom is speeding up our activities. You're guilty, aren't you? Speeding up our activities. We are driven by a fear that there's not enough hours in a day to get everything done. And so what do we do? We read faster, we walk faster, we talk faster and when somebody else is talking, we nod faster to get them to talk faster. We're just faster, speed up. We speed up our activities and we hate to wait, don't we? You know what it's like to get in a line. You hate to wait. I hate to wait. If you've been here in this series, you know that. Are some of you guilty of this? You come to a stop light out on 460, you've got two lanes and as you're driving up to that stop light, you're evaluating the traffic in front of you, right? You're looking at how many cars are in each lane. You're calculating the year, the model, a car and whether or not it's going to pull out fast and there's a no-brainer. If there's a truck in one of those lanes, you get to the other one, right? Yeah, you're guilty too. We hate to wait in lines and we do the same thing at the stores, don't we? You come to the, you know where you're going to check out and even if you're in the express line, you start calculating. How many people are in this line multiplied by how many items in the cart? Because two people with two items in a cart, I can get through there faster than one person with 15 items in their cart. So you begin to calculate, you find the line and then I know you do this. You look at the person that would be you in the other line, right? And if you get through first, there's a little cheer that goes up inside. I won, I won. And if you don't get through first, you know what happens? There's a little feeling of sadness inside, like I'll do better next time. I'm calling this hurry sickness for a reason. This is really sick when we get to this point. It's really bad. I think the Chinese have it down right. In many major cities in China, some entrepreneurs have actually started a new niche market business and that is waiting in line professionals. You can pay someone to wait in line for you. And they've recruited mostly migrant workers in these cities and they are waiting there to wait in line for you. You can pay them to wait in line for you, you can go on, do other things and then come back and get in line where they are. And it's 60 cents a weight and these people collect 60 cents every time they wait in line for somebody when they get out of line and the person who's paying for the stuff gets back in line, they go back over and wait for someone else to get in line that they can wait in line for. It's a business. Actually there was one couple that said we're making more than the town chief, which would be like our mayor. We're making more than he is per year feeding on hurry sickness. We ought to develop that here in the States, waiting in line professionals. Speeding up our activities is one symptom of hurry sickness, symptom number two, multitasking. Multitasking, you know what multitasking is? Doing more than one thing at a time, but it takes too long to say that. So we invented the word multitasking. So that's how we describe it. Multitasking. And you know what's the favorite place for multitasking today? The car. The car, isn't it? Are you guilty of this lifestyle now? The car used to be for driving from one place to the other. But now the car is not only for driving. It is for drinking our cup of coffee or drinking our soft drink, getting our news on the radio, catching up on our phone calls, and still having one hand free to make pleasant gestures to people who cut in front of us. That's what the car is for nowadays. Multitasking. We're afflicted with it. The third symptom of hurry sickness is clutter. And when I mention that word, some of you are going to think, well, clutter, that's a sign of somebody who's kind of lazy, right? Just let things lay around. Not necessarily clutter can also be the problem of those who have tried to press too much stuff into too little time. And so what it looks like around your house is that you've got stacks of books and magazines and newspapers you haven't had time to get to yet. And you've got stacks of dishes that you hadn't had time to wash. You have two days or three days worth of mail that you haven't had time to get to yet. You've got piles of clothes that you haven't had time to wash or iron. You've got a half dozen unfinished projects around the house. And you've got at least that many time-saving gadgets that you haven't had time to read the instructions for yet. So you've got all this clutter around your house. And a lot of it is a sign of hurry sickness. The fourth sign of hurry sickness is superficiality. What I'm talking about here is very important. And that is that we have a tendency because of hurried lifestyle, stressful lifestyles, to live superficial kind of lifestyles. We don't go very deep with God or with others or with issues. We are inundated with information. And so we have chosen to trade in wisdom for information. And we get little bits and pieces all throughout the day. Check the internet real quick to catch up on the latest news. We don't have time for a half hour newscast. So we just get a little bit in peace here. That's the way we operate. So we are superficial. We've traded wisdom for information. We've traded depth for breadth. We have traded focus for a channel surfing mentality. I am getting an education on how teens watch television. And I don't think I'm the only parent that's getting this education. You know how teenagers watch television today? They watch two or three minutes of one program. Boom, they're over to another program. Watch two or three minutes of that, two or three minutes of this. In an hour's time they can tell you what all five programs were about. I don't know how they do it, but they can do that. It's a channel surfing mentality. We've developed that channel surfing mentality. It's a lack of focus on one thing, but hurry and get as much in as you can in a brief period of time. The fifth symptom of hurry sickness. This is very important and sad. And that is impatience with others. Love and hurry are incompatible. You cannot live a hurried lifestyle and really love God or love others as he wants you to. John Orteberg in his book tells a story that's his favorite airline story says. It's from a pilot that he knows and the pilot told him this story. He said, one time an elderly couple got in front of a stressed businessman on a flight. In fact, they had been in front of him the whole process. They were in front of him in the check-in line. This elderly couple was in front of this hurried businessman as they went through security. As they boarded the plane, they were in front of him and to his great dismay, he found that they were sitting in back of him in business section and they were taking up space in the eye. He couldn't get his stuff in and they were slow getting their things in the overhead compartment. And he was so frustrated with this elderly couple. Finally, when they served the meal, the older gentleman got up and was fumbling around trying to get medicine out of a duffel bag overhead and the duffel bag dropped out and the businessman was getting so upset. And finally, he blurted out for everybody to hear. What's wrong with you people? Don't you ever get anywhere on time? Why don't you just stay home? He said it loud enough for everybody in the business class to hear. And to register his anger, he shoved his seat back as quickly as he could, spilling the contents of the elderly man's food tray all over him and his wife. He was stored as apologized over and over again and said, I'm really sorry that happened. She said, is there anything we can do? And the elderly gentleman said, you know, my wife and I are making our first flight. This is our 50th anniversary. We've never flown before. Our kids gave us a special trip for our 50th anniversary. And the steward has said, wait a second, let's get you a bottle of wine. They weren't Baptist. So let's get you a bottle of wine. She went back and she got them a bottle of wine to celebrate their 50th anniversary. And it was uncorked and the gentleman stood up and proposed a toast and then proceeded to pour the wine over the head of the businessman. And the pilot said the whole cabin erupted in a plow. A stressed out, hurried lifestyle is incompatible with compassion and love for other people. You will not be able to love your family. You will not be able to love others. You will not be able to love anyone. God included if you are caught up in this hurried lifestyle. So are you there? You see some symptoms of it in your life, maybe not all of them, but some? Then what's the treatment? Okay, now let's turn our attention to the Bible. Now that we've seen where we are, want you to open your Bible very slowly to Psalm 4. Psalm 4. We're going to look at the treatment for hurried sickness which I believe the Bible teaches us is purposeful slowing, a purposeful slowing of our lives. I want to look at some biblical guidelines. Some principles the Bible teaches on purposeful slowing of our lives. Psalm 4 is a great start. Verse 1. Answer me when I call to you, O my righteous God, give me relief from my distress, be merciful to me, and hear my prayer. How long, O men, will you turn my glory into shame? How long will you love delusions and seek false gods? Although that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself, the Lord will hear when I call to him. Now please notice, verse 4. In your anger do not sin when you are on your beds, search your hearts, and be silent. All for right sacrifices and trust in the Lord. Many are asking who can show us any good. Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord. You have filled my heart with greater joy than when they're grain and new wine abound. I will lie down and sleep in peace for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. You know what the first treatment is for hurry sickness? Learn to wait and be still. That's what the Psalmist is talking about. If we know anything about the context of this Psalm, and sometimes we can tell from what David is saying, there are many who believe that this Psalm was written when David was being chased by an enemy, possibly when he had been driven out of Jerusalem by his own son, Absalom. It's a time of tremendous stress for David. Obviously, you lose your throne. You get driven out of your own palace, your own kingdom, your own home. Your son is rebelled against you. That's a time of tremendous stress. But David says to those who are after him, to those who are chasing him in your anger do not sin when you're on your bed, search your hearts and be silent. That's the counsel that David has taken into his own heart because he says at the end of the chapter, I will lie down and sleep in peace for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety. Here is a man who knows what it means to wait on God to be still on his bed at night, not to be frantically worried about what's going to happen to him, but to be calm in his spirit. Even in the midst of great difficulty, here's a man who's calm in his spirit, in his heart, in his mind, he lies on his bed at night and sleeps peacefully. Be still. Learn to wait. Look at Psalm 23. Maybe the most familiar of all the Psalms. And by the way, beginning next week, I'll be starting a series of messages on favorite Psalms. I've picked up 15 of Psalms that are the favorites of most people and we'll just be working our way through them, verse by verse, in the next few months. Psalm 23 will be one of those, but notice if you will, the first three verses, you cannot read this without understanding the Psalmist's heart and his perspective. Psalm 23 verse 1, the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in pads of righteousness for his name's sake. He'll stop right there, but just you can't even read that without seeing that serene, peaceful setting of sheep that have been led by the shepherd into a pasture to lie down or to grace. There's no hurry there. There's no push there. There's no, come on, eat quick, we gotta get out of here. There's none of that. They're in that pasture and they're beside quiet waters. It's a serene, peaceful setting. It's a lie down kind of setting and be calm, be peaceful in your heart. It's a learn to wait and be still kind of setting. And that's where our shepherd wants to lead us. To learn to wait, be still. Psalm 37. Psalm 37, the first seven verses, what a wonderful chapter. Psalm 37 1 says, do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong. Or like the grass they will soon wither, like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good, dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in Him and He will do this. He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the Noonday sun. Now look at verse 7, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes. Again, even if it is difficult times or even opposition from others in your life, be still, wait patiently. Now whenever the Bible says to be still, it's talking about putting down our own efforts, putting down our own efforts to run ahead of God and solve our own problems, get this thing taken care of right now. Get it settled. It's talking about laying that down. It's talking about recognizing who He is and being still in our hearts, in our minds, in our soul to where we trust God like the passage says, we commit our way to Him. We trust in Him believing that He will vindicate our cause. It's difficult to do, but it's necessary in our hurried lifestyles to be at peace, calm in our hearts, be still and wait. Psalm 46 and verse 10 is a familiar verse of many. Psalm 46, verse 10 says, be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. You know, when you recognize that someday God will be exalted among all the nations, that everything in this universe is moving to the fulfillment of His purpose and plan for human history. And someday God will be recognized and exalted in all the nations. Boy, that's a great wall to back up against when you're in trouble. The sovereignty of God is a great wall to lean on when you're in trouble, when you're in difficulty. And when you know that, you can be still and know that He's God when things seem to be swirling all around you, when things seem to be out of control, when everybody else is hurried and frantic in their spirit to be still and know that He is God, that He has it all under control, is a tremendous quieting influence in our lives. So learn to wait and to be still. Another passage that I think is so critical to understand in this is Isaiah, chapter 40. Isaiah 40, again, another favorite I'm sure of some of you here today, Isaiah 40 verses 28 to 31. Verse 28 says, Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary and is understanding no one can fathom. What a tremendous verse. He's saying, come on, wake up. Don't you understand? Don't you know that God is the everlasting, the Lord is everlasting God. He's the creator. In other words, again, He's sovereign. He has everything under control. He created this. He's controlling everything. So don't worry. He doesn't grow tired or weary. Learn to cast your problems on Him. In other words, look at verse 29. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. In youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the Lord, the King James says those who wait on the Lord. It's the same idea because waiting on the Lord in the Bible is not just marking time. The Hebrew word for weight means to place confidence in. It means to be confident in God that He will solve our difficulties, that He will take our case, that He is our refuge. He will act for us. It's those that have that confidence who hope in the Lord, who wait in the Lord that will renew their strength. Verse 31 says, they will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint. Now we're not talking about just laying down and doing nothing in life. Certainly all of us understand that there are certain pressures where under, it may be at work, it may be in other parts of your life. You're under pressure. The point is when you have to run and when you have to walk, you can run without being weary and you can walk without being faint when you are waiting on the Lord. When you're not drawing on your own strength, when you are waiting on Him and having confidence in Him that He will take care of you and take action on your behalf. That's waiting on the Lord. So learn to wait and be still. Rather than running ahead of Him to solve our problems on our own right now, get it done. Let's get this behind us rather than that hurried, stressful kind of spirit. Learn to wait on the Lord and be still before Him. Second treatment for hurry sickness is cultivate patience. Now I want you to turn to Romans chapter 5. There's a biblical principle here that has to do with how patience is developed. And there's only one way that patience is developed really, only one biblical way that patience is developed and that's through suffering. Suffering is the best teacher of patience. You know that? There really is. Romans 5 tells us that verse 3. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, which is another word for patience. Some translations, it's translated patience. Suffering produces patience. Patients are perseverance, character and character hope. So suffering produces patience. You say, well, wait a second, John, are you saying that I should ask for suffering? Should ask for pray for suffering? No, I'm not suggesting that. Not suggesting you should pray for suffering, but suffering is the best teacher of patience. And so I would go so far as to apply the passage this way. If we want to learn patience just in our everyday lifestyle, then maybe we do need to put ourselves in some positions of discomfort and forced slowing so that we can learn patience. Because it is even that minimal degree of suffering purposefully entered into that may teach us a degree of patience. Now here's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about some forced slowing down in our lives. I'm talking about some forced discomfort, if you will, that will require that we slow down a little bit. And I would suggest several practical ways that you might try this this week. I worked on it this past week knowing what was coming and what I would be preaching and sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to be honest. Let me give you a few ideas and suggestions that I've tried just practical things to work on this week. Forced discomfort in order to learn patience and asking God to teach me patience. Number one, when you are driving this week, deliberately driving the slow lane. Do not change lanes. Try it. Just try it. You don't have to do it every day. Try it one day. Don't change lanes. And if you get behind a truck or you get behind a very slow vehicle, even a farm tractor, pray for the person in front of you. And you will find your spirit getting quiet. You'll find your soul beginning to rest. Purposely introduce a little bit of suffering, a little bit of discomfort so that you can learn patience. I would also suggest this week that you get your hands off your horn in your car. Just give your horn a rest. Put a fast, put a valve silence on your horn. Don't honk at anybody this week. Could I also suggest that you eat your food slowly this week. Eat slowly, even if it's fast food. Eat it slowly. Two fifteen times before you swallow. Try it sometime. You will learn patience. When you get to the grocery store or the department store and you're checking out those lanes, purposely get in the longest one and then let a person in front of you. It hurts. But it's a good way to put ourselves in a position where we are forced to learn patience. What I'm suggesting is that we purposely go counterculture away from what the culture is forcing us into by all the time being in a hurry, getting there fast as beating someone else and purposely slow down enough to learn a little bit of patience and maybe even the opportunity to focus a little bit more on our God. So try that this week. Cultivate patience. The third treatment for hurry sickness is develop the practice of solitude. By solitude I mean being alone. Sometimes it's just being alone to get away from the press and the crowd and the pressure and the stress just getting away from it for a little while or sometimes and even more importantly I'm talking about getting alone with God. Getting alone with God. No TV, no radio, nobody else talking to you are asking questions alone with God where you can listen to Him through His Word and you can pour out your heart to Him in prayer. Alone with God. The best example of that as we have seen throughout this series is our Savior, the Lord Jesus. If you would please look at Mark chapter 1. I just want to refresh your mind of a couple of passages we looked at earlier in this series. About chapter 1. After one of the busiest days recorded in the gospels of our Lord's life, one of only six days in the gospels that are recorded in full, that we know how the whole day went. Mark 1 is one of those days and it had been an extremely busy day. Jesus had been to the synagogue on the Sabbath and even while he was there in the synagogue he healed a man. Then he went to Peter's home and was interrupted there and healed Peter's mother and then the whole town starts bringing people to the door and he goes outside and he heals people all evening. The Bible says, notice what happened the next day, verse 35. Very early in the morning while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. Following an extremely busy, taxing, draining day, Jesus got alone with God. If Jesus in his humanity needed that, so do we. He got alone with God. There are other passages that tell us that about our Lord. If you will in Mark chapter 6, we looked at this one earlier as well. This is after Jesus had sent his disciples out two by two to heal, preach, teach, cast out demons in various villages in Galilee and it's also right after Jesus has heard news that John the Baptist died. So it's been physically and emotionally draining. And right after that in Mark 6 and verse 30, the apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him, all they had done and taught, then because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest. In an earlier message we saw that it was Jesus intent that they get away to rest. It didn't work out that way. The crowd followed them around the north end of the lake and caught them when they landed on the other side and there was more pressure and more stress and more ministry that needed to be done and that's when Jesus fed the 5,000. But after he fed the 5,000, if you'll look down at verse 45, after that occurred, verse 45, immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Betheseda while he dismissed the crowd after leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray. So Jesus said there was a point at which we are going to get away from the crowd. He dismisses the crowd, forces his disciples to get in a boat and he goes up on the mountain side to pray. Solitude, being alone with God. Luke 6, 12 says that the night before Jesus chose his apostles, the 12, he spent all night in prayer, got alone with God, solitude. What I'm saying is this, I'm not talking about being lazy, I'm talking about quieting a hurried spirit. Jesus was not lazy, would be blasphemous to even suggest that. Jesus was not lazy but Jesus quieted his hurried and pressed spirit by solitude, time alone with God and we can do the same thing. You get the impression as you read the gospels that Jesus was busy but he was never in a hurry. He was never in a hurry. It was always time to get done what needed to be done, to be diligent about it, but to do so balanced with times of solitude and quietness that kept his spirit right. Develop the practice of solitude. A few years ago, a newspaper in Tacoma, Washington told the story of a dog named Tatoo. The dog didn't want to go out for an evening run but because its owner had accidentally closed its leash in the car door, the dog had no choice. A policeman saw the car pulling down the street that appeared to be dragging something behind it and a policeman on a motorcycle pulled out, pulled up beside the car and sure enough there's this dog that's trying to run as fast as it can but it can't keep up and so it's rolling over and then it's on its feet again trying to run and it's rolling over so the policeman pulled the car over and poor Tatoo was spared. Tatoo was alive, he didn't die and he did not ask for another evening walk for a long time. A lot of us are living Tatoo kind of lifestyles. We're running as fast as we can to keep up with everything and everybody and we find it times we can't keep up and we feel like we're just rolling and tumbling and we get back on our feet and we run again and we try to keep up and we can't and we're tumbling and we run again and we're living that kind of lifestyle. And what we really need to do, what we really need more than anything else is to learn to wait and be still, to cultivate patience in our lives. Even if we have to keep up at work and it's stressful we can learn to have a patient, spirit and heart in the middle of it and not be stressed out by it at the end of the day. And yes, develop the practice of solitude, time alone with God to refresh our spirit, re-energize and recharge our batteries so that we are ready for whatever the day throws at us and we can meet it without a hurried spirit. In short, we need to recover from hurry sickness. Would you bow with me?