I’ve been relearning Psalm 103 in my scripture memory program, and I confess, I’ve never paused to think much about “slow to anger:”

The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. (Psalm 103.8, ESV)

Slow to anger. On March 20, 2026, Christianity Today published an essay by Thomas Anderson: Urgency Is Not Faithfulness. It’s worth the read in its entirety, but here are a few snippets after he opens with the tendency for churches and Christian leaders to feel the need to say something about the issue of the day, whatever that issue might be.

One then begins to realize the clock is not really measuring time; it is measuring suspicion. I have watched thoughtful, Bible-reading, Spirit-seeking Christians reduce the work of discernment to the speed of a news cycle. I have done it myself. I have mistaken urgency for obedience, letting the clock tell me when to speak and the crowd tell me what to say. But one day, I opened my Bible to Exodus 34 and met a God whose behavior, by his own description, is slow...one of the first things God says about himself is that he is slow to anger.

…The Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama spent years sitting with that same realization and arrived at a conclusion I find disarming. “Love has its speed,” he wrote. “It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. … It goes on … at three miles an hour.”

I’ve written about the three mph ministry before. And, I’ve quoted Koyama before (but didn’t remember). Anderson continues:

Three miles an hour is the pace of a human being walking down a road. Nazareth to Capernaum is roughly 26 miles. At that pace, it takes a bit more than a full workday to make the trek. Jesus has walked that path. But he was rarely in a hurry in all his journeys. He stopped for interruptions. People reached out and touched his cloak. A stranger called his name from the roadside, and he healed. Koyama called this the three-mile-an-hour God

…Patience is a discipline. It should not be mistaken for passivity, cowardice, or the absence of conviction. It is simply the refusal to let the person who provokes determine the speed of the response. Said another way, it is the decision to burn at the right moment, in the right way, for the right reason. The hot take rewards immediacy and treats reaction as courage.

…Most of us know about the story of the woman who was caught in adultery and dragged before Jesus (John 8:1–11). The crowd had gathered. The religious leaders wanted a verdict from Jesus, and they wanted it quickly.

The urgency was manufactured, designed to force a quick answer under pressure. Condemn the woman and appear righteous, or show mercy and appear soft on sin. But Jesus just bent down and wrote in the dirt. The Gospel writer never tells us what he wrote. Commentators have wondered for centuries. But the silence may be the point. When Jesus finally spoke, the words were simple: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone” (v. 7).

It’s a good word…to churches, to ministry leaders, and to the rest of us. James was clear:

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1.19, 20, ESV)