Slow Pace

I was driving down the road the other day behind a driver going 10 miles below speed limit. As often happens in these circumstances, I found myself getting aggravated at the slow pace. I couldn't understand why someone would willingly choose to drive that slow on a somewhat busy road. Didn't they have somewhere to be? Didn't they realize that those numbers on the sign were supposed to be the lower limit of our traveling speed? 

The truth is that I wasn't late for another appointment and in fact, i wasn't even really in a hurry. It was really about the fact that I was being inconvenienced by slow driving. Things were not happening at the pace that I would have preferred for them to happen.

Doesn't that describe us in many phases of our lives? Our change in physical discipline isn't producing the quick weight results we desire, our efforts to change our relationships aren't working fast enough, our increased productivity isn't bringing that job promotion we've been eyeballing, and our prayer and Scripture reading hasn't changed our faith like we want it to do. The world around us isn't moving at the pace we want and we're aggravated about it. 

The truth is that I can't make some things speed up. No matter how much I want to see things move more quickly, sometimes that tempo is just going to be slow. I can either stay aggravated because life isn't fitting into my carefully crafted agenda or I can enjoy the slower pace while recognizing that things are still progressing.