When I am with close friends or loved ones, I want to stretch out the time we are together and am usually in no hurry to leave. Lingering with someone may take effort at first, but usually doesn’t take effort while it’s happening. The word lingering has a ring to it as it rolls off the tongue. A staying-just-a-little-longer feel.

I love that God is never trying to hurry us along or cut our time short with Him just when it gets good. He is the constant companion who is unchanging and has all the time in the world for us.

I think of the friendship that Jesus had with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  He spent time with them the way we spend time with our good friends—eating, laughing, and talking about life. I believe God wants that same relationship with us. It mirrors the friendship the Trinity experienced at the beginning of time. I love that we are being invited to leave room for God to show up in unique and surprising ways as we walk through our ordinary lives.

Jesus also had built-in trust and companionship with His twelve disciples, but he didn’t travel the globe in His thirty-three years on Earth. He spent much of it in a state of ordinary soul care, as He did His Father’s work while He lived in community with His family and neighbors. We know that Jesus did a lot of walking with others, both figuratively and metaphorically. We also know that sometimes He lingered in places and took His time getting to His next destination—often at the frustration of those waiting for Him to arrive.

As I’ve been thinking about this intimate concept of walking with God, I ponder God walking with Adam and Eve. They literally, not metaphorically, walked in the cool of the day, lingering in the garden. Noah walked with God. His great-grandfather Enoch walked with God. I wonder what it might have looked like for my great-grandmothers to walk with God in their lifetime—both during seasons of ease and in hard times like the Great Depression.

When we pause to think of God arriving at humanity’s doorstep in solidarity—having experienced much of what we do—the lines of this old song gloriously recorded by Merle Haggard come to life in a deeper way.

“And He walks with me and He talks with me,

And He tells me I am His own.

A friend who comes to us, then gives His life for us.”

Lingering allows us to hear the voice of God more distinctly.

“For you have rescued me from death; you have kept my feet from slipping. So now I can walk in your presence, O God, in your life-giving light” (Psalm 56:13)

Adapted from Live Slowly by Jodi H. Grubbs. ©2024 by Jodi Heather Grubbs. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.

*For further reflection, listen to Psalm 56 today!