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 with each mile east, I’m flying back to a life I dread.

my questions come off angry and arrogant.

“There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” End of story.5

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.

We, for every kind of reason, good and bad, are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion. 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.12

“distracted from distraction by distraction.”

I can’t help but wonder if Jesus would say to our entire generation what he said to Martha: “You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one.”15

So many people live without a sense of God’s presence through the day. We talk about his absence as if it’s this great question of theodicy. And I get that: I’ve been through the dark night of the soul. But could it be that, with a few said exceptions, we’re the ones who are absent, not God? We sit around sucked into our phones or TV or to-do lists, oblivious to the God who is around us, with us, in us, even more desirous than we are for relationship.

What is it about the human condition that makes it well-nigh impossible for many of us to celebrate both those who are more gifted than we are and our own best work?

Often people hear “worship” and assume that means singing Bethel songs all day while reading the Bible and practicing intercessory prayer. That’s all great stuff. But I mean worship in the wide, holistic sense of the word. Expand your list of the spiritual disciplines to include

anything to index your heart toward grateful recognition of God’s reality and goodness.

What if the only material things we need to live rich and satisfying lives are food to eat, clothing on our backs, and a place to live? If you doubt your ability to live that simply and thrive, you’re not alone.

Creation—especially places that are yet untouched by civilization—has the potential to wake us up to our Creator in ways that few things ever can. It invokes gratitude and that secular unicorn, wonder. If materialism despiritualizes us, the material world itself has the opposite effect; it respiritualizes our souls.

Remember: the question we should be constantly asking as followers of Jesus isn’t actually, What would Jesus do? A more helpful question is, What would Jesus do if he were me? If he had my gender, my career, my income, my relationship status? If he was born the same year as me? Lived in the same city as me?

My point is, one of the best ways to slow down your overall pace of life is to literally slow down your body. Force yourself to move through the world at a relaxed pace. All

Pull out my life plan and annual goals; track my progress. Journal the ways I sense God coming to me with his invitations.

On days when I can’t focus and my imagination is running naked all over the place (which, unfortunately, is common for me), I take a few minutes and just focus on my breathing. Very basic. I “watch” my breath go in and out.

Persons who meditate become people of substance who have thought things out and have deep convictions, who can explain difficult concepts in simple language, and who have good reasons behind everything they do. Many people do not meditate. They skim everything, picking and choosing on impulse, having no thought-out reasons for their behavior. Following whims, they live shallow lives.17 In a cultural moment of shallow, mindfulness and meditation are a step toward the deep waters. 19.

I vote we turn summer into a verb again.

It’s been five years since I quit my job, got off the hurry-train, and opted for the unpaved road into the unknown.

Each moment is full of goodness. Why are we in such a hurry to rush on to the next one? There’s so much here to see, to enjoy, to gratefully receive, to celebrate, to share.

I’m just trying to not miss the goodness of each day.

And when I look over the horizon at the man I’m becoming, it’s obvious I still have a long, long way to go, but I like the line on the horizon.

To live a quiet life in a world of noise is a fight, a war of attrition, a calm rebellion against the status quo.

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.”13