Saying Yes to God in Our Fast-Paced World

A generation or two ago, it was hoped that advances in technology would help humans work more efficiently. With machines to do the work, people would have more leisure time. Computers would streamline work world while robots handled the cleaning and other around the house chores. The cartoon TV show The Jetsons portrayed that world of the future where a push of the right button could handle any task from preparing meals to cleaning the house. At work, George Jetson’s only job was to push buttons in an otherwise automated factory.

Now we find ourselves living in what was then the forecasted future, the year 2001, in a world where work moves faster and faster. In the Information Age, we can move pictures and text around the world almost instantly on the World Wide Web, while overnight shipping brings most of the world to your door for a small shipping fee. Rather than make more time for leisure, these advances in technology have seemingly increased the workload. More and more people work longer and longer workweeks just to keep on top of the ever-expanding workload.

Deadlines for projects get tighter as email, fax, and Fed-Ex make it possible to meet once impossible turnaround times. At the same time as the workload has increased, so has the expectations about what that work will yield us. Keeping up with the Joneses has become increasingly difficult now that the Joneses have three cars, a boat, a home theater system, a computer network linking the computers in every bedroom to the Internet, and more stuff than you can keep up with. For that matter their kids have all the right clothes, the right games, and even drive the right cars. How can anyone keep up with all that? Getting ahead is harder than it used to be. With the rich getting richer and richer through years of a bull stock market only recently ended, the price of success is getting higher and higher.

But where does getting ahead really get you anyway? Get all the stuff you want. Do everything you like to get ahead and succeed and you will still be missing the one thing that matters most—communion with God. All people have within them a restless longing for God which only God can fill. In our fax and Fed-Ex world its easy to lose touch with the God who guided the Children of Israel through the desert for 40 years. It’s possible to loose sight of faith as just one more thing to do, one more obligation to fulfill. In a culture who’s guiding question is “What’s in it for me?” it’s easy to see religion as just another path to self-fulfillment. Christianity can become a path to self-discovery and self-actualization.

Into this frenetic activity aimed at “having it all” and “self-fulfillment” comes the still small voice of our creator. Imagine the rush of business suddenly stopping in the middle of busy workday. The cacophonous din of traffic jams choking our big cities just stops. The incessant taping of computer keys ceases. Beneath the deafening sound of a hectic day fallen silent is the still small voice of God calling us all home.

Quite counter-intuitively for our busy post-Modern, post-Christian culture the answer to our deepest longings comes not in the form of yet another thing to do. The answer to our deepest longings comes in stopping for a moment to turn back to the creator who lovingly made us and lovingly redeemed us and saying “Yes.”

We say yes to the love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. You can give control of your life to God as revealed through Jesus Christ. In that simple act of faith, the whole world is changed. The computer keys start clacking again, the traffic is moving once more, and the din of our frenetic lives resumes once more. But, in that moment of stopping to say “Yes” to God’s “Yes” to humanity, something vital shifts. By that one simple act of faith, one can be justified, made righteous in God’s eyes.

We cannot get peace in our lives through an endless pursuit of more. Nor can we get peace in our lives through cutting back to the bare essentials. True and lasting peace in our lives is possible only through getting connected to God through prayer and corporate worship in the church of your choice. A relationship with God is not a quick fix for all that ails you. Instead, a relationship with God is the way to pursue a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in our fast paced, information overloaded age.

(The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)