The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World

by John Mark Comer

Corrie ten Boom once said that if the devil can’t make you sin, he’ll make you busy. There’s truth in that. Both sin and busyness have the exact same effect—they cut off your connection to God, to other people, and even to your own soul.

problem you will face is time. People are just too busy to live emotionally healthy and spiritually rich and vibrant lives.”

It is not that we have anything against God, depth, and spirit, we would like these, it is just that we are habitually too

preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens. We are more busy than bad, more distracted than nonspiritual, and more interested in the movie theater, the sports stadium, and the shopping mall and the fantasy life they produce in us than we are in church. Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives.

For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.14

Yet in spite of our smartphones and programmable coffeepots and dishwashers and laundry machines and toasters, most of us feel like we have less time, not more.

In the end, your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to.

All I’m saying is limitations aren’t all bad. They are where we find God’s will for our lives.

But Jesus realizes that the most restful gift he can give the tired is a new way to carry life, a fresh way to bear responsibilities…. 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.

He offers his apprentices a whole new way to bear the weight of our humanity: with ease. At his side. Like two oxen in a field, tied shoulder to shoulder. With Jesus doing all the heavy lifting. At his pace. Slow, unhurried, present to the moment, full of love and joy and peace.

if you don’t set aside time to be alone with God, your relationship will wither on the vine.

The Sabbath is an entire day set aside to follow God’s example, to stop and delight.

Remember that life as it comes to us is a gift.