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

by John Mark Comer

But what if busyness isn’t healthy? What if it’s an airborne contagion, wreaking havoc on our collective soul?

Because in an ironic catch-22, the things that make for rest actually take a bit of emotional energy and self-discipline. When we get overbusy, we get overtired, and when we get overtired, we don’t have the energy or discipline to do what we need most for our souls. Repeat. The cycle begins to feed off its own energy. So instead of life with God, we settle for life with a Netflix subscription and a glass of cheap red wine. A very poor substitute. Not because time wasted on TV is the great Satan but because we rarely get done binge-watching anything (or posting to social media, or overeating Five Guys burgers and fries, etc.) and feel awake and alive from the soul outward, rested,

anxiety is often the canary in the coal mine, our souls’ way of telling us something is deeply wrong and we need to fix it,

The frustrated sense of incompletion? Of a melody unresolved? Not at rest? That feeling is the human condition.

once you work a certain number of hours in a week, your productivity plummets.

We like to think slavery ended in 1865, but the reality is, we just moved it overseas. Out of (our) sight; out of mind. There are twenty-eight million slaves in the world today, more than were ever trafficked in the transcontinental slave trade of the eighteenth century.31

In the wild, the animal is forced to divide its attention between various activities. That is why animals are incapable of contemplative immersion….

Receive the good as gift. Accept the hard as a pathway to peace.

“Every now is an eternity if it is full of God.”3

my Rabbi teaches that happiness isn’t the result of circumstances but of character and communion.7

Aim at an easy life and your actual life will be marked by a gnawing angst and frustration; aim at an easy yoke and, as John Ortberg once said, “Your capacity for tackling hard assignments will actually grow.”