Why Hurry Hides God: 4 Insights from a 19th-Century Pastor on Unhurried Living

Blog from the Unhurried Living Team

Unhurried living isn't a scheduling strategy — it's a posture of soul. When hurry takes over, it raises a cloud that hides God from our sight, even in the middle of our best, most well-intentioned work. A 19th-century English pastor named Frederick Faber saw this clearly, and his words carry a strange, clarifying weight for any leader who feels spiritually flat despite staying busy.

If you've been wondering why your inner life feels thin even when your calendar is full, this may be the question worth sitting with: what if the pace itself is the problem? Alan Fadling, co-founder of Unhurried Living, recently explored four passages from Faber's Spiritual Conferences — a book written for a particular community in another century, yet somehow addressed to ours. These four movements — on doing fewer things, savoring grace, loving well, and clearing the dust — form a quiet invitation back to God.

What Did the Saints Actually Do with Their Time?

Frederick Faber makes a claim that initially sounds like an insult: the saints, he writes, did few things. Their lives were, in his word, "disappointingly empty." No crammed inboxes, no back-to-back seasons of ministry output, no visible productivity metrics to point to. They kept what Faber calls reserves of time — space held open for their own souls and for God.

That word — reserves — deserves a slow read. A reserve is not leftover time. It is protected time. It is the deliberate refusal to let every hour be claimed by something urgent. The saints weren't lazy or disengaged. Alan is careful to name this: unhurried isn't the same as unproductive. Rather, what looked like emptiness from the outside was availability from the inside — a spaciousness where deep roots could quietly grow.

There's a line Faber writes that carries particular weight: the saints "did what they had to do a thousand times better" precisely because they refused to be spread thin. This is not a counsel of withdrawal. It is a counsel of focused fidelity — the kind of presence that becomes possible only when we stop trying to do everything.

One small step: Name one commitment on your calendar this week that you added out of obligation rather than calling. What would it mean to protect that hour for God instead?

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Are You Gulping Grace Instead of Letting It Nourish You?

Faber's second passage shifts from what we do to how we receive. He writes that we are "too much given to swallowing our graces without chewing them." We move too fast to let grace do its quiet work. We gulp it and hurry on.

The image is uncomfortably accurate. Christian leaders — perhaps especially — can become fluent in the language of grace without actually being formed by it. Alan names it plainly: he catches himself converting a moment of clarity from God into a blog post or a podcast paragraph before he's even had time to feel it. The gift becomes content. The medicine becomes a tweet. This is what Faber means by impetuosity — a precipitation of spirit, a hurrying past what was meant to linger.

What is the cost? Faber suggests that half of our spiritual lukewarmness comes not from too little devotion but from too much speed. We aren't dry because we haven't received enough from God. We may be dry because we haven't stayed long enough to be nourished by what we've already been given. Grace isn't fast food. It's meant to be tasted slowly, turned over, allowed to work.

One small step: After your next time in Scripture or prayer, sit in silence for two minutes before moving on — no notes, no next steps, just receiving.

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What Is the One Thing That Makes Any Work Matter?

Faber's third passage turns toward motive. "The only important thing in good works," he writes, "is the amount of love we put into them." The soul of an action is its motive. The power of an action is in its intention.

This is a direct challenge to the metrics most leaders live with — attendance, reach, impact, visibility. None of these are wrong in themselves. But Faber names what outlasts all of them: love. A quiet act of love offered in secret, he suggests, carries more weight in God's economy than a dazzling achievement performed for lesser reasons. That's not false modesty. That's a different accounting system entirely.

Alan frames the question this way: How much love is in what I'm doing? Not how much am I doing — but with what depth of intention am I offering it? The call isn't necessarily to do less work. It's to let the work we do be rooted in something more honest and more durable than visibility or success. Ministry done from love looks different, moves differently, and sustains the one doing it in a way that output-driven service simply cannot.

One small step: Before your next meeting, pastoral conversation, or act of service, pause for thirty seconds and ask: what would it mean to bring love — not just competence — into this?

How the Hurried Life Raises Dust That Hides God

Faber's final image is perhaps his most arresting. He writes of those who "get into a hurry and so raise a dust as they go — and this dust hinders them from seeing God." Alan says simply: he feels that image in his gut.

Hurry is not just a pace problem. It is a visibility problem. The very activity we intend in service of God can become the thing that obscures God from our sight. Not because the work is bad, but because the cloud of our own striving has thickened to the point where clarity is no longer possible. We can be genuinely committed to faithful ministry and still be moving too fast to see where God is actually leading.

The comparison below names what the contrast looks like in practice:

The invitation that runs through all four of Faber's passages is the same one Unhurried Living has carried for years: slow down, not to accomplish less, but to receive more fully, offer more truly, and lead from a place that isn't running on empty.

One small step: At the end of your day, name one place where hurry kicked up dust. What would it have looked like to move more slowly through that moment?

A Word to Worn-Out Leaders Wherever You Are

Whether you are serving a congregation in a rural town or leading a ministry organization from a home office, the pressure to do more, move faster, and stay visible finds its way in. No geography protects against it. The worn-out leader in one city carries the same quiet exhaustion as the one in another — the same sense that the pace has outrun the soul. If that's where you find yourself, Unhurried Living exists precisely for this. Their programs, podcast, and coaching are designed not as additions to an already full schedule, but as a different way of inhabiting the one you have. The invitation is open wherever you are.

The Dust Settles When We Slow Down

Hurry hides God — not because God withdraws, but because we move too fast to see. Faber's four movements offer a quiet diagnosis and a quieter cure: do fewer things, chew your grace, work from love, and let the dust settle. The truest gift you can offer those you lead may not be your pace or your output, but your presence — a clear-eyed, unhurried witness to a God who is not in a hurry.

Sign up for the weekly email at unhurriedliving.com/connect for a regular invitation back to this kind of spacious attention; and if you're ready to go deeper, explore the PACE 21-month certificate program at unhurriedliving.com/pace, designed to help leaders build the inner foundations that make sustainable ministry possible.

FAQ

Q: Why does busyness make me feel distant from God? A: Busyness crowds the inner life — not because God moves away, but because hurry raises what Frederick Faber called "dust" that obscures our vision. When our pace outstrips our soul's capacity to receive, we lose the clarity that comes from unhurried presence. Slowing down isn't spiritual retreat; it's how we create the conditions to see God again.

Q: What does unhurried living actually look like for a Christian leader? A: Unhurried living is less about having an open calendar and more about holding reserves of time — protected space for the soul. It looks like savoring a word from Scripture instead of converting it immediately into content, offering work from love rather than from pressure, and doing fewer things with greater depth and intention.

Q: How do I stop feeling spiritually flat when I'm staying busy with ministry? A: Spiritual flatness often comes not from too little devotion but from too much speed. Frederick Faber observed that we "swallow grace without chewing it" — we move too fast to be nourished by what God gives. The practice of slowing down enough to savor grace is what allows it to do its quiet, forming work in us.

Q: Is unhurried living the same as being unproductive or disengaged? A: No — this is one of the most important clarifications Unhurried Living makes. The historical saints Faber describes did fewer things, but they did what they had to do far better. Unhurried living is about focused fidelity, not passivity. It's the difference between being spread thin and being rooted deep.

Q: How can I create more space for God in a full ministry schedule? A: Start small and specific. Protect one block of time this week that belongs only to your soul — no deliverables, no content to produce. Practice staying with a moment of grace rather than immediately translating it into something useful. Over time, these small reserves become the ground from which deeper, more sustainable fruitfulness grows.