My friend Bill Mowry, Navigator and author of the wonderful discipleship tool Ways of the Alongsider, likes to quote author Wendell Berry who often draws life lessons from his experiences on the farm. Recently Bill wrote about “organic ministry” – a subject for another day – and in it he included these paragraphs:

[Wendell] Berry asserts that successful farming begins with a simple act: walking the land.“Farming,” writes Berry, “is mainly observational . . . walking and looking, season after season, for many years. . . . The gait most congenial to agrarian thought and sensibility is walking. It is the gait best suited to paying attention . . . and most permissive of stopping to look or think. Machines, companies, and politicians run!”

[Bill continues: ] How are walking and farming related? Berry argues that “the faster we go the less we see, the less we see [the less the land flourishes]. This law also applies with equal attention to work; the faster we work the less attention we pay to its details, and the less skill we can apply to it.” It logically follows that as speed increases, care declines.

This reminds me of Bill and my mutual friend Skip Gray, now in his late 80s. Skip says:

Jesus had a 3-mile-per-hour ministry: he didn’t go jogging through Judea, sprinting through Samaria, or galloping through Galilee. He walked wherever he went.

Jesus had an unhurried life and ministry. Often the gospels record, “Jesus saw a man…” (E.g., John 5.6 and John 9.1) Jesus saw people because he was walking, moving slowly. I’m reminded of that day in Haiti when a missionary and I were walking to a nearby village and met one of my seminary students on his way to a meeting. After talking with us for a few minutes, he turned around and began walking with us toward the village. The missionary asked him, “Weren’t you on your way to a meeting?” To which he replied, “Well, I was, but you’re here now!” Walking (or at least a slower pace of life!) affords us the opportunity to change direction, to see what needs to be done, or to learn a lesson.

The next day, John stood with two of his disciples. And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. (John 1.35 – 37, NKJV, emphasis mine)

Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. (John 9.1, MSG)

One day I walked by the field of an old lazybones, and then passed the vineyard of a lout; They were overgrown with weeds, thick with thistles, all the fences broken down. I took a long look and pondered what I saw; the fields preached me a sermon and I listened… (Proverbs 24.30 – 32, MSG, emphasis mine)