It is folly to believe that everyone can move along in life successfully at the same level or speed. Life has speeded up for those who live in developed countries, and has inevitably spilled over to some degrees in underdeveloped countries. The matter is much too large for a Page, but we can venture into it for some influence for our lives, identified in the American context. In this context we have noted that information has increased several fold in the last century, species have been lost in the changes, survival requires more resources and labor, especially to police the faster working patterns that people adapt to change, what they want to keep, and the symptoms/causes of speed-up influence related to matters like news reporting. We are determined to move faster, to live faster, to educate faster, to use machinery (of all kinds including computers) to complete procedures and projects faster, and so the analysis can be expanded. Relentless!
The speed-up has affected family life negatively, depleted resources unduly, reduced in depth thought for the general population, increased expectations for faster transportation into dangers of accident, even increase in the speaking sentence rate that includes sound and visual bytes in the media. That too is the beginning of a list of evidences for speeded-up life. The variables in any context become challenge for understanding and application to action. One of my sons is engaged as consultant to major business incorporations, including media companies. In our review of this matter of velocity in human experience he noted that he and his people are including the problems of relentless applications to what they do, especially the negative meaning they may be getting from some of their procedures related to their business with suppliers and customers/users. My interest remains in discovering where velocity is related to the context in which any person or institution functions. On a major church denomination board I was serving, we discussed what might be done with two or three missionaries who had become widely known for their work in both ministry and influence for needed charitable involvement. Their supervisor at the main office wisely pointed out what needed to be done in working with the high-flyers. These flyers had talents, energy, ideas, applications that were above the normal. The normal carried the burden of the whole work, in cooperation with the home office, and the local leaders in their adopted countries. They were settled in for the long haul, winning for the church in increments that the normal (the massive middle group of the society) could manage. Both could serve in a relentless self-commitment to their assignment and calling, within the context that identified them. Even those not able to absorb normal course could serve well in the defining and leading for a context in which they could contribute. Wisdom is found in the persons who recognize their gifts, and accept the context in which they live and work with respect for who they are and what they can bring to the life of which they are a part. We may not be able to manage the high-flyers.
I have seen all that work well in many situations. In our town there is an industry that hires only those who would not be hired by others employers. They have various employees earning their way despite the inhibitions of various handicaps that they do not treat as handicaps. They have their order, and it works. When I served as administrator of a college, I insisted (relentlessly) that the business administrator find the job that this or that employee would succeed in fulfilling – once we were convinced the attitude of the employee was favorable to that person’s own value and meaning. One went through four trials at jobs in which she failed. In the fifth assignment, Miss Anderson became the best person in that assignment that we ever had. It was similar many centuries ago when Jesus took twelve middle course men, and made them, except for one, into persons who changed the world. In the place of the failing member, he chose a high flyer in the person of the Apostle Paul who chose a number of persons in the normal contingent to advance his ministry. All this is fitting to the ways of God not to grade the job according to its status, but to grade the faithfulness of persons in fulfilling the call of God and the use of their gifts and talents for effective life. It belongs to another Page to deal with the fact we can move back and forth in this informal identity. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020