Do you remember the story of the tortoise and the hare? It was the story of a real

fast rabbit who told everybody that nobody could outrun him and a tortoise that

accepted the challenge. So the gun goes off, the race starts, the rabbit outruns the

tortoise and is so far away that he actually loses sight of the turtle. So he lies down

and goes to sleep, thinking “I’ve got plenty of time to beat the turtle.” The turtle

keeps putting one foot in front of the other and quietly passes the sleeping rabbit,

who is awakened by the cheers of the stunned crowd when the tortoise wins the

race. At the end of the story is this poem:

Do not brag about your lightening pace

For slow and steady wins the race.

(Chuckle) Right! Slow and steady? Not on this planet. Everything in our lives

now is about speed. How fast can you microwave the dinner? We have to speedread

now, because we don’t have the time to luxuriate over the creativity of a

writer. We have to get the information and get going. We speed date. If a

relationship can’t happen in thirty minutes it’s probably not going to happen. We

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need to move on. Everything is about speed. We buy cars because they go from 0

to 60 miles per hour in seconds. We buy computers that deal in gigabytes per

second. We eat our food so fast that sometimes we don’t even taste it. But there is

a backlash against this faster and faster lifestyle. People are beginning to see that

this constant pressure of speed actually robs us of something in our lives. We are

reading articles now from thinkers who talk about taking a Sabbath, of learning

how to linger in the moment, of paying attention to the present, of being in the

now. Jesus taught His disciples that very principle. It’s in the fifteenth chapter of

John, where He talks to them about learning how to abide. I’m reading the New

American Standard this morning: John 15: 1- 8.

Introduction

Sermon text with italics and bold and John 3:16 and v. 20.

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