Hurry Carried Into the Room Where God Is

Think about the last time you sat down in a service, or knelt down at the side of a bed, or pulled over somewhere to pray.

Now think about the ninety seconds before it.

For most people those ninety seconds are the fullest of the day. A parking space that was not there. A conversation on the way in. A phone put on silent while walking. A calculation about what still has to happen this afternoon. Somebody's shoes. A door.

Then you sat down, and you started, and you were still going at exactly the speed you came in at.

And the hour was fine. Nothing went wrong. You sang and you agreed and it was all true, and you drove home slightly emptier than you had hoped, and you have quietly assumed for a while now that the reason is something in you.

It is not something in you. It is the speed.

You did not arrive slowly enough for anything to land, and nobody arrives slowly by accident, and nobody ever told you that arriving was a thing you had to do on purpose.

Be not rash with thy mouth

There is a verse in Ecclesiastes about coming into the house of God, and it is not about reverence in the way people usually mean.

Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few. (Ecclesiastes 5:2, King James Version)

Look at the word hasty. Let not thine heart be hasty.

Not irreverent. Not casual. Hasty. The fault being named is a speed, and the speed is located in the heart rather than in the manner, which means a person can be entirely sincere, entirely respectful, doing everything correctly, and still be doing the thing the verse warns about.

Because hurry does not look like disrespect. It looks like enthusiasm. It looks like a person who dives straight in.

You are being spoken to about a pace rather than about your reverence, and nothing in your heart toward God has ever once been in question here. Ecclesiastes 5:2 names haste rather than coldness, and it is the Holy Spirit who lets a person hear a correction about speed without turning it into a verdict on their love.

Let thy words be few

Now the instruction, which is one of the strangest in the whole book, and I want to sit on it rather than rush past it.

Let thy words be few.

Everything in a person coming out of a full week says the opposite. There is so much to say. There is a list of things that need praying about and the list is real and the people on it are real.

And the verse says fewer words.

Here is what I think it is protecting. A person who arrives at speed and starts talking immediately never stops being the one in motion. The whole encounter is theirs. They set the pace, they set the subject, they set the length, and God is present at an event that a tired person is running.

Fewer words creates a gap. And a gap is the only place where something can come the other way.

You are able to leave a gap, and it has never once been the number of your words that determined whether the hour reached you. Ecclesiastes 5:2 asks for fewness rather than for eloquence. The Spirit of God is the one who fills the space a person makes rather than the one who competes with them for it.

And I want to say the encouraging half loudly, because this is a room full of people who love God and are tired. Nothing in that verse says your prayers have been unwelcome. He is not standing at a distance grading the delivery. The list is real and He wants the list.

You are welcome in that room at any speed, and the welcome has never once depended on how well you arrived. The written word aims its instruction at how a person comes rather than at whether they may come, and His Spirit is entirely able to make a hurried person genuinely at home before they have slowed down at all.

Thirty seconds before the first word

Now the practical part, and it is very small on purpose, because this room does not need another discipline.

Thirty seconds. Before the first word.

Sit down, or kneel down, or stay in the car, and say nothing at all for half a minute. Not praying silently, which is still talking. Nothing.

That is not emptying your mind, which is somebody else's practice and not ours. It is simply not starting yet. Your mind will carry on doing whatever it is doing, and that is fine, and nobody is asking you to manage it.

Thirty seconds is enough because thirty seconds is roughly how long it takes a body to notice it has stopped. That is the whole mechanism. Nothing spiritual is being claimed for the number.

Then start, and start with fewer words than you brought.

You are able to give a room thirty seconds before speaking into it, and no prayer has ever been made worse by arriving a little later than the person did. Ecclesiastes 5:2 sets fewness of words against haste of heart. The same Spirit who inspired that line is well able to hold somebody still in a chair for half a minute.