Notes from “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” by John Mark Comer
Notes from “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” by John Mark Comer
My overall thought on this book actually came from a different book, and talked about how Jesus was never in a hurry (which I shared a few months ago here).
Here’s a video that goes through an overview of the book, and you can see my full notes and highlights below.
Prologue: Autobiography of an epidemic
Summary from GPT: Comer shares his personal burnout story as a megachurch pastor, describing how he felt like “a ghost. Half alive, half dead” and realized “in America you can be a success as a pastor and a failure as an apprentice of Jesus.”
Part one: The problem
1. Hurry: the great enemy of spiritual life
Summary from GPT: Dallas Willard told John Ortberg: “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life… Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day.” Comer argues that “love, joy, and peace…are incompatible with hurry” because hurry cuts off our connection to God and others.
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.
Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil.” – Carl Jung
“Hurry and love are incompatible.”
“To restate: love, joy, and peace are at the heart of all Jesus is trying to grow in the soil of your life. And all three are incompatible with hurry.”
Here for the win, Walter Adams, the spiritual director to C.S. Lewis:
“To walk with Jesus is to walk with a slow, unhurried pace. Hurry is the death of prayer and only impedes and spoils our work. It never advances it.”
2. A brief history of speed
Summary from GPT: The chapter traces how Western society accelerated from natural time rhythms to artificial clock time, culminating in 2007 with the iPhone release. “Before Edison the average person slept eleven hours a night” compared to seven today, showing how technology reshaped our relationship with time.
From Roman playwright Plautus:
The gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
Who in this place set up a sun-dial
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small portions
Harvard Business Review recently conducted a study on the change in social status in America. It used to be that leisure was a sign of wealth. People with more money spent their time playing tennis or sailing in the bay or sipping white wine during lunch at the golf club. But that’s changed. Now busyness is a sign of wealth.
And 1440, of course, was the year Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, which set the stage for the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, which together transformed Europe and the world.
“Reminder: Your phone doesn’t actually work for you. You pay for it, yes. But it works for a multibillion-dollar corporation in California, not for you. You’re not the customer; you’re the product. It’s your attention that’s for sale, along with your peace of mind.”
3. Something is deeply wrong
Summary from GPT: Modern life has created “hurry sickness,” defined as “a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things…in less and less time.” Comer provides a self-diagnostic checklist showing how hurry creates “a form of violence on the soul.”
And hurry is a form of violence on the soul.
The ten symptoms of hurry sickness:
Irritability
Hypersensitivity
Restlessness
Workaholism (or just nonstop activity)
Emotional numbness
Out-of-order priorities
Lack of care for your body
Escapist behavior
Slippage of spiritual disciplines
Isolation
The poet Mary Oliver, not a Christian but a lifelong spiritual seeker, wrote something similar: “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”
“Many have noted that the modern world is a virtual conspiracy against the interior life.”
Because attention leads to awareness. All the contemplatives agree. The mystics point out that what’s missing is awareness. Meaning, in the chronic problem of human beings’ felt experience of distance from God, God isn’t usually the culprit.
Because what you give your attention to is the person you become.
Part two: The solution
4. Hint: the solution isn’t more time
Summary from GPT: The problem isn’t lack of time but our failure to accept human limitations. “We’re made ‘in the image of God’…but also: we’re made ‘from the dust'” – meaning we have both potential and limitations that we must embrace rather than fight.
“Here’s my point: the solution to an overbusy life is not more time. It’s to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters.”
“One of the key tasks of our apprenticeship to Jesus is living into both our potential and our limitations.”
The limitation that we all have:
Our bodies
Our minds
Our giftings
Our personalities and emotional wiring
Our families of origin
Our socioeconomic origins
Our education and careers
Our seasons of life and their responsibilities
Our eighty or so years of life
God’s call on our lives
I love Peter Scazzero’s line: “We find God’s will for our lives in our limitations.
5. The secret of the easy yoke
Summary from GPT: Jesus offers an “easy yoke” (Matthew 11:28-30), but Willard’s insight is that “if you want to experience the life of Jesus, you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.” Following Jesus requires taking on his actual practices, not just his teachings.
To be one of Jesus’ talmidim is to apprentice under Jesus. Put simply, it’s to organize your life around three basic goals:
Be with Jesus.
Become like Jesus.
Do what he would do if he were you.
Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.
“An easy life isn’t an option; an easy yoke is.”
6. What we’re really talking about is a rule of life
Summary from GPT: A rule of life is “a schedule and set of practices to order your life around the way of Jesus,” like a trellis for a vine. Comer argues we must “ruthlessly eliminate hurry” and create intentional rhythms for spiritual growth.
Let’s say your marriage is less than ideal. Your spouse comes to you and asks for more time together, simply to enjoy each other and get back on the same page. He or she asks for, say, one date night a week, thirty minutes a day of conversation, and a little time on the weekends. Basically, the bare minimum for a healthy marriage.
Intermission: Wait, what are the spiritual disciplines again?
Summary from GPT: The spiritual disciplines are “the practices of Jesus” – habits from his lifestyle that we can adopt. They are “activities of mind and body purposefully undertaken, to bring our personality and total being into effective cooperation with the divine order.”
“But for Jesus, leadership isn’t about coercion and control; it’s about example and invitation.”
Part three: Four practices for unhurrying your life
Silence and solitude
Sabbath
Simplicity
Slowing
7. Silence and solitude
Summary from GPT: Jesus regularly withdrew to “eremos” (quiet/solitary places) for prayer, showing that “silence and solitude are the most important of all the spiritual disciplines.” Henri Nouwen said “Without solitude it is virtually impossible to live a spiritual life.”
8. Sabbath
Summary from GPT: The Sabbath means “to stop” – it’s “an entire day set aside to follow God’s example, to stop and delight.” Walter Brueggemann observed that “People who keep sabbath live all seven days differently,” making it both rest and “an act of resistance” against materialism.
“Ultimately, nothing in this life, apart from God, can satisfy our desires. Tragically, we continue to chase after our desires ad infinitum. The result? A chronic state of restlessness or, worse, angst, anger, anxiety, disillusionment, depression—all of which lead to a life of hurry, a life of busyness, overload, shopping, materialism, careerism, a life of more…which in turn makes us even more restless. And the cycle spirals out of control.”
Walter Brueggemann has this great line: “People who keep sabbath live all seven days differently.” It’s true. Watch out for the Sabbath. It will mess with you. First it will mess with one day of your week; then it will mess with your whole life.
Command one: Sabbath as rest and worship
Command two: Sabbath as resistance
9. Simplicity
Summary from GPT: Jesus taught that “life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). Comer advocates for minimalism, defining simplicity as “the intentional promotion of the things we most value and the removal of everything that distracts us from them.”
If and when you do, you’ll be happier. Duh. Everybody knows that. Happiness is out there; it’s just one PayPal click or outfit or gadget or car payment or mortgage away. Out of reach, yes. But barely. I’m almost there. I can feel it.
“Because where you put your resources is where you put your heart. It’s the steering wheel to your engine of desire.”
The principles of simplicity:
1. Before you buy something, ask yourself, What is the true cost of this item?
2. Before you buy, ask yourself, By buying this, am I oppressing the poor or harming the earth?
It’s easy to post something on Instagram about how there are twenty-eight million slaves in the world today and we need to end it. That’s great. I’m all for it, genuinely. But many of the clothes we’re wearing for our selfie (that we took on a device made in rural China) are causing it, not ending it.
3. Never impulse buy.
4. When you do buy, opt for fewer, better things.
Remember, the world is constantly asking “How do I get more?”, but the apprentice of Jesus is regularly found asking “How can I live with less?”
5. When you can, share.
6. Get into the habit of giving things away.
7. Live by a budget.
8. Learn to enjoy things without owning them.
9. Cultivate a deep appreciation for creation.
10. Cultivate a deep appreciation for the simple pleasures.
11. Recognize advertising for what it is—propaganda. Call out the lie.
12. Lead a cheerful, happy revolt against the spirit of materialism.
Getting started
The first time I went through my closet, I decided to limit my wardrobe to six outfits per season. One for every day of the week, with Sunday as a choose-your-own-adventure day. I literally had an outfit schedule on the inside of my closet door. If you saw me on Monday, I was wearing my gray sweatshirt and black jeans.
So I cut it in half and went down to three outfits per season. Now I was wearing my gray sweatshirt on Mon-Wed-Fri. I loved it.
I recently went down to two for summer. I alternate every other day, and it feels great. I love each outfit. They were both ethically and environmentally sourced. And for the first time I can ever remember, I have extra money in my clothing budget and no need to spend it. Or desire to.
10. Slowing
Summary from GPT: This chapter offers twenty practical “rules” for slowing down, from driving the speed limit to getting in the longest checkout line. The goal is to “slow down your body, slow down your life” because “multitasking is a myth” and we need to practice single-tasking and presence.
I’ve started to notice that anti-rule people are often anti-schedule people; and anti-schedule people frequently live in a way that is reactive, not proactive. As more passenger than driver, consumer than creator. Life happens to them, more than through them.
Some ideas to gamify driving into the spiritual discipline of slowing:
1. Drive the speed limit.
2. Get into the slow lane.
3. Come to a full stop at stop signs.
4. Don’t text and drive.
5. Show up ten minutes early for an appointment, sans phone.
6. Get in the longest checkout line at the grocery store.
7. Turn your smartphone into a dumbphone.
8. Get a flip phone. Or ditch your cell phone all together.
9. Parent your phone; put it to bed before you and make it sleep in.
10. Keep your phone off until after your morning quiet time.
11. Set times for email.
12. Set a time and a time limit for social media (or just get off it).
13. Kill your TV.
“Our time is our life, and our attention is the doorway to our hearts.”
14. Single-task.
15. Walk slower.
16. Take a regular day alone for silence and solitude.
17. Take up journaling.
18. Experiment with mindfulness and meditation.
I can’t put into words what meditation does for my soul. Tim Keller, however, can:
“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.”
19. If you can, take long vacations.
20. Cook your own food. And eat in.
Epilogue: A quiet life
Summary from GPT: Comer concludes with Paul’s instruction to “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). His personal mantra becomes: “Slow down. Breathe. Come back to the moment. Receive the good as gift. Accept the hard as a pathway to peace. Abide.”
For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.
Make it your ambition to live a quiet life.
1 Thessalonians 4:10-11 — For indeed you practice it toward all the brothers and sisters who are in all Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers and sisters, to excel even more, and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we instructed you,