The Pace of Presence
In October 2013, a Danish traveler named Torbjørn C. Pedersen left home with a backpack and a self-defined rule: He would visit every country in the world without boarding an airplane.
What was meant to be a four-year journey stretched into nearly a decade. Pedersen traveled through 203 countries and territories over 3,500 days. He crossed oceans on cargo ships, rode buses and trains across continents, and spent two unexpected years in Hong Kong when the pandemic closed the borders around him.
Traveling without flying changed Pedersen's experience of the world in a remarkable way. Distance returned, landscapes shifted slowly from one region to the next, languages overlapped at borders, and cultures revealed themselves in layers rather than snapshots.
He also tells a consistent story about people. Across countries, cultures, and circumstances, strangers offered help: meals, directions, a place to stay. The headlines we read each day did not match his face-to-face interactions, and his slower pace made both the world and its people more tangible.
Consider how Scripture describes a similar rhythm. ... Jesus did not rush from place to place. He walked and stopped for conversations that others would have avoided. He noticed interruptions and turned them into opportunities. Much of his ministry unfolded not in isolated moments, but along the road -- in the time it took to move from one place to another.
Psalm 46:10 offers a simple, familiar command: “Be still, and know that I am God.”
The kind of stillness God is calling us to is not the passive kind. It is attentive. It creates space to see what is already in front of us.
The week ahead offers plenty of ordinary opportunities to slow down: to stay in a conversation a little longer, to notice someone who would be easy to overlook, to move through a day without rushing past everything in it.
Remember that God’s work is not limited to dramatic moments. Much of it unfolds in the steady, unhurried spaces we are tempted to skip. And walking speed is nearly always all that is required.