Learn to Enjoy God

So, this is a paper I wrote this semester. This is the fruit of an interview with Richard Foster, so I thought it would be nice if I shared his wise words and stories with you. Umm...oh, I was supposed to submit it to Relevant Magazine...but I never did...but that is what it was written for. It is really nothing outstanding...but Richard Foster is great! (I realize it's kind of lengthy for a blog. o well)

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A lot of college students feel young and invincible. A lot of us feel like we need to get college over with so we can get started with our lives. But, maybe we are missing our life right now while we are in college. As Richard Foster quoted, “Rest, rest, you have nothing to do but to rest in the Lord.”

Maybe one of our biggest problems as college students is that we are “ready to convert the world at least by tomorrow,” which Foster told me was his attitude in college. Since then, he has learned to be a little more patient about changing the world.

We revolve a lot of our lives around time, but maybe in order to live more spiritually-full lives, we need to live outside of time. Foster quotes John Muir in saying that we need “to become time-rich. To become rich in time, that’s a good thing.” In Foster’s life, he exercises “time-richness” by going to the canyon near his home in Denver. Most days, he is out there for an hour or two, just to get in touch with creation. Like many people, when he is in creation, he feels much more connected to God. He slows down to spend time with the trees and the flowers and the birds. Some days, he just listens to the wind for a while.

“The creation reflects the order, the glory, and the goodness of the creator,” and maybe it is in all these things that God can teach us. Perhaps what’s missing on a lot of college campuses is the slow life that Foster finds in his canyon. Foster describes this lifestyle many of us students have chosen as “hurry sickness” and he says that “all of us are affected by it.”

Perhaps a benefit of not being in a hurry is a better prayer life. A lot of times I find myself and the people around me rushing into prayer. We approach God in a hurry like we approach the rest of our life. Foster really encourages everyone to be more patient with themselves. He said, “One of the old writers said, ‘We learn to pray as we can and not as we can’t.’”

As a college student, Foster used to get up at four o’clock in the morning to try to pray. He would find himself falling asleep, so he would stand up against a wall, but he found out that he is capable of falling asleep even standing against a wall. “You have to learn to pray as you are able to. You have to take it one step at a time. God is a lot more patient with us than we are with ourselves.”
Rather than just slowing down in our prayer lives, Foster suggests “we learn to pray in such a way that it doesn't take any time in a sense but it occupies all of our time.” Part of the beauty in this new attitude and lifestyle of slowing down is that it is a lifestyle of constant prayer. As we live our lives, we are also “bringing our hearts to God.”

I had to agree with Foster when he told me that he thinks the biggest struggle for college students is distraction. “We have ten thousand things coming at us”, and we are distracted by technology, school, work, relationships, and it really is difficult to focus on loving God when we feel like we need to focus on the other 9,999 things that are whirring around our minds. Maybe it is our modern lifestyle that has made us like this, but I think it is just our human nature that makes us “constantly jumping up, going here, and going there.”

We need to find ways “in which we learn to let go of distraction so that our lives can focus, focus on God of course.” In college, we are so intent on accomplishing and making friendships, and there is nothing wrong with that, but we need to remember what we are on this earth for. There is a time for studying and learning. Foster said that for him, “studies were a way of honoring God and worshipping God” when he was in school. Learning and studying is definitely a good thing and can bring glory to God, but what can we do now to live a much more rich life?

Richard Foster has spent a lot of time on college campuses and in the presence of college students. He is more than just a writer; he is a deep thinker and an incredibly kind man of great wisdom. He studied at George Fox University and Fuller Theological Seminary and has been a professor at several universities.

On my college campus, it is definitely a little difficult to go to the wilderness and get away from the busyness of city life. But, as Foster says, if we want to slow down, “we ruthlessly cut out hurry in our lives. We learn not to be so full of hurry.” He encouraged me to take a walk around the track by the football field and around the campus, get a little exercise, sit up in the stands, and watch the people. He tells me that “people are interesting, just watch them. Sit down and talk with somebody. Sometimes you find God as you talk with somebody. Everybody is carrying burdens and you learn about them. You learn about the needs and all those things. Learn to enjoy God.”

Learn to enjoy God. Is that what we are missing? Are we in such a hurry that we are not enjoying God? Are we rushing through our spiritual lives in order to move onto the next great thing that is going to happen? Perhaps we should slow down our pace.

I am imagining my life in slow motion. A life with much more beautiful imagery; reflecting on the beauty of God, talking with friends around campus about life rather than just yelling “hey, how are you doing?” as we pass each other on our way to separate places, eating meals together, tasting each bite and thanking God for each new flavor, walking just to walk not because I need to run to the store as quickly as possible to get back to the next thing. I am thinking of a much more honest, contemplative, and communal attitude towards life.

With the inspiration of Richard Foster, I am advocating a great slowing down among students everywhere. I am proposing a great deep breath, an enjoyment of every minute of our lives. Maybe the spiritual aspect missing on college campuses everywhere is a contemplative slowness only defined by a life focused on loving God. We can cure this “hurry sickness” by maybe just taking simple steps to cut hurry out of our lives. Maybe we just need to “learn to enjoy God.”