Two months ago I was speaking at a conference. As I spoke I realized my time was almost up. I mentally considered skipping to the end of my speech but the Powerpoint slides were all lined up and I couldn’t skip them. I decided to hurry through my next point about margins. I told the following story. “A pastor arranged for a one-hour meeting with Dallas Willard, a theologian who has written books about spiritual formation. ‘My church is growing rapidly. We are in the middle of a huge building project. What do I have to do to care for my spiritual life. As the pastor of this growing group, this is very important to me.'”
Dallas Willard was quiet before he thoughtfully responded. “You need to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.”
The pastor quickly jotted that down in his notebook. “OK. Ruthlessly eliminate hurry from my life. Got it. What else do I need to do? I only have one hour with you and I want to learn all I can.”
At this point the whole audience burst out with loud laughter. I was so surprised that I almost got derailed in my speech. Why was everyone laughing? Finally I started laughing too and we carried on.
Fast-forward two months: I was buying a book on Amazon.com and I get an ad for a different book I might be interested in, “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry.” Hey, how did Google know about that startling incident at the conference in Colorado?
John Mark’s church was growing by 1,000 people a year. After several years this got to be too much. Their church grew to six week-end services. John would get wiped out after preaching this many times in a row.
Home now, late dinner. Can’t sleep; that dead-tired-but-wired feeling. . . . On the couch, watching an obscure kung fu movie nobody’s ever heard of. Chinese, with subtitles. Keanu Reeves is the bad guy. Love Keanu. I sigh; lately, I’m ending most nights this way, on the couch, long after the family has gone to bed. Never been remotely into kung fu before; it makes me nervous. Is this the harbinger of mental illness on the horizon? (Comer, J., 2019, p.2).
This book is easy to read, laced with humor, and it has some fun-sounding out-of-the-box ideas. For example, John now loves to celebrate the Sabbath with his wife and young children.
Even if the Sabbath is no longer a binding command, it’s still the grain of the universe. It’s a gift—and one I want to open and enjoy. Nine times out of ten, Sabbath is the best day of my week, no exaggeration. Every Friday night, after Sabbath dinner, we bake a giant cookie in a cast-iron pan, a full square foot of chocolate yumminess. Then we dump a carton of ice cream on the top, let it melt a little, and eat it all straight out of the pan—it’s some kind of symbolic nod to both our unity as a family and our collective love of sugar. As we indulge, we go around the table and share our highlight of the week (p. 173).
Even if you don’t struggle with binging on TV or sugar I am sure you will glean good ideas from this book.
Reference
Comer, J. M., (2019) The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (p. 2). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.