Only in Leisure

Scripture References: Psalm 63:1; Romans 1:9-10

National Park officials welcome 250 million people to our treasured parks each year. Most visitors are day-trippers, coming to look and run. In 1983, the average time spent for all forty-eight national parks was four and one-half hours. For Isle Royale it was four days, perhaps due to its remoteness. Yosemite or Sequoia, Yellowstone or Glacier National Park in four and one-half hours? To so heatedly race in and out of these stunning temples of granite offers no time to pause, let alone stop and look, listen and smell the delights of mountains, rivers, and high country.

Unfortunately, prayer fares far worse than our National Parks. Though God invites us to sit and enjoy time in his presence, we hasten in and out of prayer like we do a fast-food establishment. Yet the more we pray, the more we enjoy it and receive from it. When we rise from prayer we are always more keen for it than when we first knelt. God’s answers come to all who seek his presence. He doesn’t time the length of our prayers, but it is for our own soul’s delight that we spend time with him, finding in spiritual leisure the grace that haste denies.

Courtesy of Speaker’s Sourcebook of New Illustrations by Virgil Hurley © 1995 by Word, Incorporated.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.