I appreciated all of the good comments on yesterday’s post. I encourage you to go back and read some of the input. Very helpful!

As I promised, below are some of the bullets I’ve come up with as an initial attempt to offer examples of how Jesus was more unhurried than even His contemporaries.

• Jesus spent the entire night in prayer before He chose His twelve disciples. I don’t know whether this was a common practice for rabbis in His day. My recollection is that most rabbi’s waited for disciples to come to them (but I could be wrong here).
• Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:16 )
• At the Spirit’s leading, He began His ministry with forty days in the wilderness. And this after waiting until thirty to begin His ministry.
• His brothers were impatient for Him to publicize His ministry, but He had an unhurried sense of God’s timing for Him. (John 7:4-6)
• James and John wanted to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritan village that didn’t welcome Jesus, but He rebuked their rush to judgment. (Luke 9:52-56)
• One could say that Jesus was trying to slow His disciples down when they came back from a ministry trip wanting to talk about their experiences of spiritual power, while Jesus wanted them to be more excited about the profound gift of having a place in heaven (Luke 10:19-20).
• There an unhurried sense of timing in how Jesus stops to speak with the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years who found healing in touching the edge of His cloak. He was on the way to heal a synagogue leader’s daughter who dies because of His unhurried sense of timing. Sometimes Jesus unhurried timing is puzzling to us in the moment. (It doesn’t hurt that He is so in tune with the Father that He is able to heal her).
• Mary and Martha (and perhaps His followers) are frustrated and even angered by Jesus’ delayed response to the urgent news about His good friend Lazarus’ serious illness. (John 11:1-44)

Thank you again for your interaction. It helps me immensely in this process. The lines I included in my draft of chapter 1 ended up being:

“After waiting thirty years to begin his ministry, his first ministry act is to follow the Spirit into forty-days in the wilderness. His own brothers urged Him to do some publicity if he wanted to be a public figure, but Jesus didn’t bite (John 7:4-6). He seemed frustratingly unhurried on his way to heal the synagogue official’s daughter (Mark 5:22-43) and to visit his sick friend, Lazarus, who dies in Jesus’ two-day delay (John 11:1-43). His sense of timing often puzzled those around Him.”