Trying to get the Bible right is a very big deal. When we speak of it as the Word of God, we do well to remember that it is also the composition notebook of a centuries-long caravan of asylum seekers. In a time like Advent, we might be prone to skip straight to the baby Jesus and . . . whatever else we might find comforting. If we do that, we risk losing a sufficient sense of our own context as well as that of the people whose experience of God yields the Bible itself. We need to take it slow.
But let me make one observation. I find that God goes ‘slowly’ in his educational process of man. ‘Forty years in the wilderness’ points to his basic educational philosophy. Forty years of national migration through the wilderness, three generations of the united monarchy (Saul, David, Solomon), nineteen kings of Israel (up to 722 BC and twenty kings of Judah (up to 587 BC), the hosts of the prophets and priests, the experience of exile and restoration – isn’t this rather a slow and costly way for God to let his people know the covenant relationship between God and man?
Jesus Christ came. He walked towards the ‘full stop’. He lost his mobility. He was nailed down! He is not even at three miles an hour as we walk. He is not moving. ‘Full stop’! What can be slower than ‘full stop’ – ‘nailed down’? At this point of ‘full stop’, the apostolic church proclaims that the love of God to man is ultimately and fully revealed. God walks ‘slowly’ because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is ‘slow’ yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, whether we are currently hit by storm or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.
The people of God were taught the truth of bread and the word of God in the wilderness as they walked three miles an hour by the three mile an hour God.