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February 11 - February 28, 2020
“All my worst moments…are when I’m in a hurry.” “Love, joy, and peace…are incompatible with hurry.”
Why am I in such a rush to become somebody I don’t even like?
“They are too alive to die, and too dead to live.”
“There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
“The number one problem you will face is time. People are just too busy to live emotionally healthy and spiritually rich and vibrant lives.”
The problem isn’t when you have a lot to do; it’s when you have too much to do and the only way to keep the quota up is to hurry.
Hurry and love are incompatible. All my worst moments as a father, a husband, and a pastor, even as a human being, are when I’m in a hurry—late
if there’s a secret to happiness, it’s simple—presence to the moment. The more present we are to the now, the more joy we tap into.
very little can be done with hurry that can’t be done better without it.
A malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time, and so tends to perform every task faster and to get flustered when encountering any kind of delay.
attention leads to awareness.
Because what you give your attention to is the person you become.
Put another way: the mind is the portal to the soul, and what you fill your mind with will shape the trajectory of your character. In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to.
“Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart.”
the solution to an overbusy life is not more time. It’s to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters.
Every day is a chance. Every hour an opportunity. Every moment a precious gift.
To be one of Jesus’ talmidim is to apprentice under Jesus. Put simply, it’s to organize your life around three basic goals: Be with Jesus. Become like Jesus. Do what he would do if he were you.
If you want to experience the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.
“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”
If the results you are getting are lousy—anxiety at a simmer, mild depression, high levels of stress, chronic emotional burnout, little to no sense of the presence of God, an inability to focus your mind on the things that make for life, etc.—then the odds are very good that something about the system that is your life is off kilter.
Realism sees that life is a succession of burdens; we cannot get away from them; thus instead of offering escape, Jesus offers equipment. Jesus means that obedience to his Sermon on the Mount [his yoke] will develop in us a balance and a “way” of carrying life that will give more rest than the way we have been living.8
Can you imagine a stressed-out Jesus? Snapping at Mary Magdalene after a long day, “I can’t believe you dropped the hummus.” Sighing, and saying to himself, “I seriously need a glass of wine.”
Jesus’ schedule was full. To the brim at times. In a good way. Yet he never came off hurried.
Jesus made sure to inject a healthy dose of margin into his life.
He would regularly get up early and go off to a quiet place to be with his Father. There’s a story where the disciples woke up and he was gone. Left before dawn, just to be alone and greet the day in the quiet.
