The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
During 2026, Peachtree Church is inviting everyone into Cultivate, a churchwide discipleship plan centered on the fruit of the Spirit and the kind of life God longs to grow in us. Throughout the year, we’ll explore how love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control take shape in everyday life through the Spirit’s work. Cultivate brings together worship, Scripture, group guides, and meaningful practices designed to meet you where you are and support growth in ways that fit your season. These twice-weekly devotionals are one way to stay connected, offering reflection and grounding for daily life with God. Whether you engage in many ways or just one, you’re invited to be part of this shared journey of becoming more rooted in who God has created and called you to be.
Devotional
There is a kind of violence that leaves no bruises.
- It happens in the car when we rush to the next thing.
- It happens when we skim instead of really reading something.
- It happens when we react to a situation instead of praying about it.
- It happens when every moment becomes a means to the next moment.
- The clock becomes a peculiar opponent, and the day becomes something to survive.
Maybe that is why the old line feels so uncomfortably true: hurry is violence against time.
Not because time itself can bleed, but because hurried living complicates the life God gave us. We stop inhabiting moments and begin conquering them. “I crushed that” replaces “I enjoyed that.”
If we’re not careful, we try to make time submit to us instead of receiving it as a gift.
And yet the Scriptures describe God very differently. Repeatedly, it reveals that God is patient. The Hebrew Scriptures often use a phrase that literally means “long of nose,” an ancient image for someone slow to anger. God is not rushed, reactive, or panicked.
The Lord creates slowly, teaches slowly, heals slowly, and very often grows people slowly. Abraham waits decades before receiving what he’s promised. Israel wanders for years in the wilderness to work out their immaturity and toxic beliefs aftercenturies of enslavement. The disciples misunderstand Jesus for almost the entirety of the Gospels. Even Jesus’ resurrection, and its ramifications, took the early Church decades of careful thought and practice to understand it.
God seems unhurried for someone holding this complex universe together.
We, however, often move as if speed is salvation. We need to change our minds before it’s too late. For instance, “what if patience is a form of kindness applied to time?”
Patience allows a conversation to breathe. Patience lets grief finish its full work within us. Patience honors the slow progress that people in our lives need for sustained growth. Patience teaches us that, while revolutionary growth might get an article written about us (or our organization), evolutionary growth strengthens us for our future.
A hurried person digs up the seed to check on it. A patient person waters it and waits.
Being patient is the decision to stop demanding that every season become another season before its moment arrives.
The long chapter about time in Ecclesiastes 3, and the hit song by The Byrds, says there is “a time for every matter under heaven.” Not every time is harvesting time. Some moments are for planting, for healing, for silence, and for joy. Wisdom is not forcing one season to behave like another.
Jesus seemed to understand this deeply. He walked slowly enough to be interrupted. He noticed people that everyone else moved past. Only occasionally did Jesus express irritation with people around him. Overall, he never treated people like obstacles between himself and the most important thing.
Perhaps love itself requires enough slowness to notice another person fully. And maybe that is why hurry wounds the soul. It turns both people and moments into objects to manage rather than mysteries to receive.
So today, perhaps holiness looks less like accomplishing and more like paying attention. Maybe one of the quietest acts of faith is simply refusing to rush what God seems willing to grow slowly.
For Reflection
- What is one area of your life where you have been patient, and you’ve recognized that your patience has been a reward?
- Is there a person or a type of person you are impatient with? What small, subtle habit can you use to slow down and be present to them?
- What is a promise or a dream that you’ve been “watering and waiting for?” How has God shaped you by the waiting of that promise?
Prayer
Father, Son, and Spirit – we recognize that you are the Eternal God, the One who dwells not just in the length of eternity’s time, but also in the depth of it. Help us change our minds about time. Help us to be kind to it by learning to cherish life’s mysteries and the people we share them with. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.
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Devotionals