By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Of course, by the end of the 19th century, everything had changed: trains could cart supplies across the country in a week, cars shrunk the distance between villages, and the telegraph accelerated the flow of information. In the last 150 years, we have gone from mail delivered only as fast as a horse can gallop to cell phones which allow people to be reached anywhere at any moment. Unlike my predecessors, I don't have to spend the whole morning hiking across the hills to discuss a budget question with the Church Treasurer; I can call Mary Stearns on the phone, get my answer immediately, and still have time to take care of a dozen other church matters before lunch. We often watch the younger generation texting their friends and complain that these young kids have been spoiled by the expectation of instant gratification, but the reality is that all of us live in an age that is unique compared to the years that have gone before us. From the time of the first cro-magnon man trotting across the savannah to bring word of a new hunting ground to his family, to the troops of George Washington waiting for the sound of hoofbeats to announce a scout's arrival -- for thousands upon thousands upon thousands of generations, the pace of life was limited to the speed of the fastest animal. And now suddenly, the flow of information is limited only by the speed of light.

What has that done to our sense of time? The desire for instant gratification is not a disease affecting only our texting teenagers: the fact is that all of us, from 9-90, have been affected by this revolution in our experience of time. We no longer want to wait for the weekly newspaper to know what is happening in Haiti -- we want to turn on CNN and find out right now. We don't want to wait for the horse-carried mail to bring news of the birth of a new grandchild -- we want to hear the phone ring the instant the doctor declares, "It's a girl!" We want to know it now; we want to feel it now; we want to taste it, see it, and hear it now.

But were we as human beings, these bubbling cauldrons of emotions and fleeting impulses, really designed to be able to cope with the instantaneous gratification of our desires? What happens to us as people when there is no time delay between our desire and the fulfillment of that desire?

It seems to me that what we lose is the possibility of thoughtful intentionality in our actions: there is no longer time to step back and think about what we are doing. And my fear is that I believe God exists in the space where the thinking happens, because it is in the space where thinking happens that compassion, unselfishness, and effective concern for others also happen.

A little while ago, Google added an optional service to its email program called Mail Googles. Mail Googles only operates between 10:00 at night and 4:00 in the morning but during those hours, any time you try to send an email, the computer will say to you, "Sure, I'll send that email but first you tell me what 21 divided by 3 plus 2 equals." If you answer 9, it will throw another equation at you and another, and only after you have successfully answered a series of easy math problems will the computer finally agree to send your email.

Mail Googles was originally developed by Google programmers for their own use because these young software engineers realized that most of their angry rants to their bosses, or their love-struck and embarrassing emails to co-workers were sent late at night when they were tired, depressed, or under the influence. Acting spontaneously on your feelings at 2:00 in the morning turns out usually to not be a good idea. If you had lived a couple of hundred years ago, you would have had to hitch up the old mule and troddled miles down the road in the dark to yell at your boss at two in the morning, increasing the likelihood that you would have cooled off (or fallen off) before you got there, but today, we can act on our feelings and desires instantaneously and receive equally instant results, often to our detriment or the detriment of others. Mail Googles is designed to force time on us -- to make us step back, take a breath, and think about what we are doing.

How many of us would benefit from a piece of software like Mail Googles implanted right in our heads? Our child throws a tantrum and we are tempted to react just as instantaneously back, which will plunge both of us into a struggle to see whose emotional needs will win out. We need a Mail Googles that steps into the fray and says, "I am freezing your tongue until you can tell me the square root of 16 divided by 2." Or a spouse comes home irritated from a bad day and your initial desire is to say, "I don't have the patience to deal with you when you're like this," but instead Mail Googles turns on and says, "Before you are allowed to withdraw, tell me what 236+5-20 equals." Your brain is dragged back into the forefront while your emotions are forced to take a back seat. In that cleared space, you now have time to put aside your own reactions and consider what may be most helpful to your frustrated spouse.

Passion is emotion, but compassion -- the ability to act in a way that benefits another -- requires our brains as much as our hearts because to act compassionately towards another, we can't just depend on sloppy feelings of sympathy; we have to be able to comprehend their needs and think through what is going to help them most in the long term. Passion can flare up and die back again instantaneously but compassion, the love of others that Christ calls us to, requires time -- time to step back, time to think, time to focus on who that other person is and who they want to become.

I like to think of this passage from Ecclesiastes as a kind of Biblical Mail Googles program, because when I read these words "to every thing there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven," I hear the unspoken corollary question, "Is this the time for this purpose?"

If there is a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted, we have to step back and ask, "Is this the time to plant or is this the time to pluck up what is planted?"

If there is a time to keep, and a time to cast away, we have to step back and ask, "Is this the time to hold on to this hurt in self-protection, or is this the time to let go so that we can all move on?"

If there is a time to keep silence and a time to speak, how many of our children would benefit from our learning which is which? We become better parents when we know that sometimes it is time to speak, but sometimes it is best to end our speaking, to stop the lecture, and keep silence while we listen.

I had a ministry professor who once reminded us, "If you go into the woods hoping to see a deer, you aren't going to be very successful if you stomp around saying, 'Hey deer, come out where I can see you!' The best way to see a deer is to sit quietly on a stump, hold very still, and wait. So it is often with people." There is a time to speak and there is a time to keep silence.

The loss of time in our culture has resulted in the loss of this kind of intentionality in our actions. We do things because they feel good at the moment not thinking about the long term affects on ourselves and others. The question of Ecclesiastes -- is this the time for this purpose? -- acts as a pause button in our brains making us focus for a moment on the larger picture and on all of the people that might be affected by what we choose to do.

The compassion to which Christ calls us requires that we engage both our hearts and our brains, whether it is in our response to our children, our spouses, our partners or friends, the neighbor on the street, or the stranger in a quake devastated country. Our emotions will move us to act but our heads must ask, "Before I act, am I sure that what I want to do is what that person most needs me to do? How can I bring about the best outcome for this other person?"

True compassion requires deliberation. It requires our brains. It requires thoughtful intentionality. It requires time.

May we all implant Ecclesiastes 3 in our brains. May we all learn to slow down the pace of our lives just enough so that we have time to think before we act, to let God into the process and be intentional in our love toward others, so that God's purpose for each of us may be accomplished.