God Speed

The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper. --Genesis 39:23

God made Joseph prosper.  This is a central theme in Joseph's story.  It's why, at the end of the story, Joseph can confidently tell his brothers, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good" (Genesis 50:20). 

As I wondered about God prospering Joseph, I looked up Gen. 39:23 in Hebrew and found that
the word for prosper or success in Hebrew is צָלַח tsalach and, interestingly one of the word's primary meanings is "to rush."  Might this be where we got the phrase "God speed"?  It turns out that it is:

From Middle English phrase God spede (“may God cause you to succeed”), from God (“God”) + spede, singular subjunctive of speden (“to prosper”), from Old English spēdan, from spēd (“success”) (from wiktionary)

The first place the word tsalach shows up in the Bible is in Genesis 24 where Abraham sends his servant back to his homeland to find a wife for Isaac.  The servant prays for success in his quest, and providentially the first woman he meets turns out to be a perfect match for Isaac.  When the servant first meets her, "The man gazed at her in silence to learn whether or not the Lord had made his journey successful" (Gen. 24:21).  Had God tsalach-ed?  And indeed God did.

I'm intrigued by the idea that speed and success are connected as signs that one is experiencing God's favor.  When I was asking God about whether it was time to leave the church where I was pastor and take a call at a new church, I was overwhelmed by the speed with which that new call came, and that speed was one of the reasons I felt I was seeing God's hand at work.  I had expected to be looking for at least a year or more, since that's what others had told me to expect because the market for pastors is small.  I put my PIF (Presbyterian for resume) up on our search system in January.  Within a few days I had inquiries, by April I had a job offer, and I started the new position on June 1.  In church world, that is definitely God speed.  

The church I went to, on the other hand, had been searching for awhile and had begun to despair about whether they would ever find a new pastor.  One of the verses from the Bible that renewed their hope was Jeremiah 29:11:

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

But here the Hebrew word that's translated in the NIV as "prosper" is not tsalach, it's shalom, a word that's often translated "peace" but which has a broader meaning: completeness, wholeness, contentment, and, yes, prosperity. In my coming to that church, tsalach and shalom came together, quickly for me, and slowly for them.  Maybe not surprising, after all, since "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day" (2 Peter 3:8).  

Maybe God's speed is often outside our comprehension because, as John tells us, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5).  Light is the fastest thing there is.  Einstein theorized that nothing could move faster than light, and though scientists have found some plasma that moves pretty fast, it's still not as fast as light. (Read more at space.com)

I have often said I wished for a matter transporter like the one in Star Trek so that I could go visit people who live far away from me.  Curious about that, I discovered this:

We are stuck on the idea that 300,000 kilometres a second is a speed limit [the speed of light], because we intuitively believe that time runs at a constant universal rate. However, we have proven in many different experimental tests that time clearly does not run at a constant rate between different frames of reference. So with the right technology, you can sit in your star-drive spacecraft and make a quick cup of tea while eons pass by outside. It’s not about speed, it’s about reducing your personal travel time between two distant points. And that has a natural limit – of zero.

As Woody Allen once said: Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. Space-time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening in the same place at once.  (Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2011-10-light-speed.html#jCp )

"It's about reducing your personal travel time between two distant points."  So I wonder if, when we're praying for someone, it is as if we have transcended the bounds of time and space, moving at God speed, if you will, to make a spiritual connection, even if we cannot experience that physically?

And maybe Woody Allen isn't too far off, if we consider that Ecclesiastes says something similar:

So, then, God made things happen for Joseph at God speed, and God made my job transition happen at God speed.  How have you seen God's speed in your life?

Wherever you are and whatever is happening with you, I wish you Godspeed.