Speediness is often a priority. When choosing an internet service, or making travel plans, or hiring a contractor, time is a factor. Why would you elect an itinerary that has six stops in as many cities, as opposed to a direct flight? When is it preferable to pick a builder who predicts that it will take six months to remodel your kitchen, rather than one who promises to finish in six weeks?

It turns out that layovers can be a marvelous chance to explore new places. When making a decision about a renovation, short term inconvenience can be a trade-off for better workmanship. Slower internet is never a good idea. 

In church, the topic was hurrying. The minister talked about the Children of Israel, whose destiny was to wander in the wilderness for forty years. The shortest route to their destination could have been covered in eleven days, had promptness been the only concern. Yet God apparently felt that there were lessons to be learned from the stop and start practice of following a cloudy, or fiery, pillar. It can take forty years to loosen your grip on self-determination, and trust that God will lead you. I am in the second half of my sixties, and it is still rough. 

Part way through the service, there was a visual example. The floral arrangement caught fire from the candles, and someone rushed up to extinguish it. I remembered one of the few times Benjamin has made a phone call. People were burning trash across the street, and he called 911. 

I savored that brief sense of urgency. I tried to imagine myself as someone who follows God's leading, not from a message sluggishly received, but from an inner imperative. 

"In the internal sense, “haste” does not mean quickly, but certainly, and also fully; for haste implies time, and in the spiritual world there is no time." Secrets of Heaven 5284, Emanuel Swedenborg