Our microwave at the parsonage hasn’t worked for at least a couple of years now. For the most part, we don’t miss it. But there are moments. You pour a cup of coffee, get distracted, and come back to it cold. That’s when you miss the microwave. Or when you’re trying to defrost something quickly, or warm something up in a hurry. There are things a microwave does that are really convenient.
Don’t get me wrong, microwaves have their place. But let’s be honest—they’re a poor substitute for the stove, for the oven, and definitely for an air fryer. Most of the time, the container is hot while the food is still cold. And when food does experience the zap, some parts are overdone, some parts are barely touched.
And that’s been true for over fifty years. The microwave promised to make life better by making it faster. And it did make things faster—but not necessarily better. We can’t blame it all on the microwave, but somewhere along the way, we started to believe that faster is always better.
Now that assumption has spread far beyond the kitchen. We want everything faster—faster answers, faster communication, faster results. And we’ve started to expect that same speed in our relationships. We want understanding quickly. We want connection quickly. We want trust quickly.
But relationships don’t work that way.
You can exchange information quickly, but you can’t build trust quickly. Trust takes time. It takes presence. It takes showing up again and again. And when life starts to move too fast, those are the very things we begin to lose.
We become efficient, but less attentive. Connected, but not always present. Busy, but not always known.
John Mark Comer, in our companion book, describes this cultural moment as the result of a long “history of speed”—a world shaped by one innovation after another, each promising to save us time. And yet, instead of feeling less hurried, most of us feel more so. His conclusion is simple, but hard to ignore: something is deeply wrong. Not just with our schedules, but with the pace of our lives.
And because we’re moving so fast, we start settling for substitutes. We replace conversations with texts. We replace time together with quick check-ins. We replace listening with reacting.
Comer goes so far as to say that hurry isn’t just a schedule problem—it’s a spiritual one. Because love, at its core, requires time. And when we rush, love is often the first thing to suffer. We assume we understand each other because we’ve shared information—but understanding isn’t the same as being known. And being known takes time, we’re often unwilling to give.
So misunderstandings linger. Assumptions grow. Patience thins. And instead of slowing down to repair those things, we try to fix them quickly. A short apology. A quick clarification. A rushed conversation squeezed in between everything else.
Sometimes it helps. But often, it just heats the surface. Because the deeper parts—the places where trust actually lives—are still cold.
We see this in our families, where we live under the same roof but struggle to find unhurried time together. We see it in friendships that slowly drift, not because of conflict, but because of neglect. We see it at work, where collaboration is constant but genuine connection is rare.
We’re feeling this breakdown of trust beyond our personal relationships as well. In this current moment, as global tensions rise and the news cycle moves faster than ever, many people find themselves unsure what—or who—to trust. Statements are made, revised, contradicted, or walked back. Confidence has eroded, even among staunch supporters. And those who are paying close attention are left with the same conclusion: I can’t trust what I’m hearing.
When trust is lost at that level, the effects ripple outward. Words feel thin. Important conversations become harder to navigate because we no longer share a common foundation. Even the systems meant to inform us can struggle to keep up, still operating at a pace and posture shaped by an earlier time. And when that happens, it can feel like we’re all trying to make sense of something that keeps shifting—like we’re being asked to build understanding on something that never quite settles.
And we even see it in the church.
We can gather in the same room, sing the same songs, pass the same peace—and still not really know one another. We can share prayer requests without sharing our lives. We can move quickly from one thing to the next and never slow down long enough to truly see the person in front of us.
Over time, something begins to feel off—like life is full, but something at the center is still cold. Because you can microwave a meal, but you can’t microwave a relationship. Trust is slow to build—and fragile once it’s formed.
You can’t rush trust. But you can destroy trust quickly.
Something has happened. You can feel it before you even understand it. The room is different. The air is different. The people who were hiding just days ago are now talking all at once—voices raised, energy building, trying to put words to something that doesn’t quite fit into words. There is laughter where there had been fear, movement where there had been stillness, hope where there had been grief.
They keep coming back to the same thing: “We’ve seen him.” Not remembered him, not honored him—seen him. Alive. And it’s not just what they’re saying, it’s how they’re saying it. Something in them has shifted. Whatever they experienced didn’t just inform them; it changed them.
Have you ever walked into a moment like that? A moment where everyone else seems to share something real—something powerful, something that changed them—but you weren’t there? So you’re listening, trying to make sense of it, wanting to believe it. But you don’t have what they have. You didn’t see what they saw.
That’s where Thomas found himself after the resurrection, according to the Gospel of John. And if we’re honest, it’s where many of us find ourselves. You’ve heard the stories, you see the change in other people, and you want it to be true—but your experience hasn’t caught up yet.
So when Thomas says, “Unless I see… unless I touch… I will not believe,” it doesn’t sound like defiance. It sounds familiar. He’s not asking for more than the others received; he’s asking for the same thing. He’s naming the gap between their certainty and his experience.
And then the story does something we don’t expect—it slows down. Jesus doesn’t show up right away. Scripture tells us it’s a week later. A full week of living with questions, of wondering if you missed it, of trying to trust something you didn’t experience.
Unless I see the scars of the nails in his hands and put my finger on those scars and my hand in his side, I will not believe.
John 20:24-29
And then Jesus returns. Not in a rush, not on demand, but at the right time. And when He does, He doesn’t correct Thomas or shame him or say, “You should have figured this out by now.” Jesus simply says, “Put your finger here… reach out your hand…” In other words: take all the time you need.
Jesus doesn’t rush trust. But He also doesn’t leave Thomas hanging. Jesus comes back. He shows up again. He meets Thomas right in the middle of his doubt. And in that moment, Thomas responds with one of the clearest declarations of faith in the entire gospel: “My Lord and my God.”
What changed? Not the story. Not the message. The difference was presence. Because trust isn’t built through pressure; it’s built through encounter.
And that’s the good news for us. In a world that tries to microwave everything—even faith—Jesus refuses to rush the process. He is willing to wait, willing to return, willing to meet us in the very place where our questions live.
You can’t rush trust. But you can destroy trust quickly. And Jesus knows the difference. So Jesus moves at the speed of relationship.
What would it look like to live differently? What would it look like to resist the constant pressure to hurry—not by withdrawing from the world, but by choosing a different pace within it?
If Jesus refuses to rush trust, then following Jesus means learning to slow down. Not everywhere and not all the time, but in the places that matter most. Because if trust is built slowly, then it must be practiced intentionally.
In our companion book, Comer suggests that if something is deeply wrong with our pace of life, then the solution isn’t simply to try harder—it’s to live differently. To adopt rhythms that make space for what hurry crowds out. And at the center of those rhythms is something surprisingly simple: presence.
To be fully present with God. To be fully present with one another. To be fully present to our own lives.
That kind of presence doesn’t happen accidentally; it has to be chosen. It looks like staying in the conversation a little longer instead of moving on too quickly, and listening without preparing your response. It looks like giving someone your full attention—even when your mind wants to rush ahead.
It looks like showing up again, and again, and again. Because that’s how trust is formed—not in big, dramatic moments, but in small, repeated acts of presence. Over time, those moments begin to change us. We notice more, listen more carefully, and become less reactive and more patient—less hurried and more grounded.
And slowly, something at the center begins to warm. Not because we forced it, and not because we rushed it, but because we gave it time.
What if we became a community that refused to microwave relationships? A community that didn’t just exchange information, but made space to truly know one another? A community where people could bring their questions, their doubts, their unfinished stories—and not feel rushed to resolve them?
A community shaped not by efficiency… but by presence.
Because that’s the kind of community Jesus creates. One where trust is not demanded, but formed. One where people are not hurried, but seen. One where Christ meets us—not at the speed of our expectations, but at the depth of our need.
You can’t rush trust. But you can destroy trust quickly.
So the invitation is simple—and not easy: slow down and stay. Stay in the conversation, stay in the relationship, and stay present long enough for trust to grow. Because that’s where Jesus meets us, and that’s where life begins to change.
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This is a reminder that we publish a weekly newsletter called the Circuit Rider. You can request this publication by email by sending a request to FlintAsburyUMC@gmail.com, or let us know when you send a message through our website. We post an archive of past editions on our website under Connect – choose Newsletters.
Pastor Tommy
Some content comes from John Mark Comer. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Colorado Springs : WaterBrook, 2019. ISBN 9780525653097.