The ruthless elimination of hurry

John Mark Comer’s book of this title has hit a spot with many people–good– though I suspect I am not its target audience. I’m too old, a baby boomer, and I am not often told these days to slow down. Nor did I greatly enjoy the humble-bragging (I’d spoken at six meetings that day), nor Comer’s perhaps slightly insecure need to keep telling jokes through the book. As a reader, I felt sometimes I was a sea-lion to whom he needed to keep throwing fish.

Still though. I really appreciate John Mark Comer’s wider goal (of which this title is a part) of learning and teaching spiritual formation in a digital age. I could use some of that. And there’s lots to learn from this book and the real and helpful experiences of the author. Even though I’m hardly on social media, I still find plenty of ways of wasting time on a smartphone, and he has some useful, if drastic, solutions. And some things you can’t say enough:

  • Rest.
  • Be.
  • Do one thing at a time, stop, think, then do another thing.
  • If you’re too busy, do less. Make a list of the things that are important or life-giving to you and do them. Slice off large parts of the others.
  • Make time for life-affirming things: cooking, conversation, play.
  • Be (and think of yourself as) as marginal player, happy to be a widget in the great machine, even if people can’t quite figure out what you’re actually for.

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