Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever our Lord may wish to work in you. It is certainly a higher virtue of the soul, and a greater grace, to be able to enjoy the Lord in different times and different places than in only one. Saint Ignatius  This week marks our last blog in the series following John Comer’s The Ruthless Elimination Of Hurry. If you have missed any from the series, I highly recommend you catch up as the book is a great balance of… Read More

“Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom;     in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth     without knowing whose it will finally be. Psalm 39 Our current culture has us striving for more. As soon as we leave education (whether that be after GCSEs, A-Levels or higher education), the main goal is to get a job or career. More than that, it is to ensure we are paid well so that we can go for that flat or house, buy that car, afford those holidays, enjoy life and live comfortably. Once we reach our… Read More

“Desire is infinite partly because we were made by God, made for God, made to need God, and made to run on God. We can be satisfied only by the one who is infinite, eternal, and able to supply all our needs; we are only at home in God. When we fall away from God, the desire for the infinite remains, but it is displaced upon things that will certainly lead to destruction.” Dallas Willard Last week we looked into one of the practices to help ‘unhurry’ your life as set out… Read More

I don’t know about you, but each week I promise myself I’ll do better next week. Better meal planning and prep, better at venturing out of the house with my little one, do more during my little one’s nap time than just watch TV; read a book, blog, work, work out, read the Bible, pray or simply be. And at the end of each week I’m disappointed. I’ve eaten more take out than I should have, hardly moved my body, watched too much TV and spent way too much time on Instagram…. Read More

There’s a story about Jesus.  He’s teaching in the synagogue when a guy, called Jairus, rushes in and falls at his feet, begging him to come and heal his daughter who is literally “at the point of death” (Mark 5:23).  On the way to Jairus’ house, Jesus is stopped by a woman with a chronic health condition.  Jesus’ response to her is beautiful, taking all the time to not only heal her body but show value for her soul. But imagine Jairus!  Screaming inside for Jesus to Come On! Filled with anxiety…. Read More

If you’re still reading this blog today then it’s likely that you, like me (and I expect most people), recognize the symptoms of hurry sickness, can see how it’s negatively affecting our lives….and want a way out. What’s the answer? Well, tracing John Mark Comer’s book, the solution is not: MORE TIME. “If only there were ten more hours in the day!”……is not a real solution.  What would we do with it?  Learn a new skill, enjoy a new place, travel to new sites, help more people…..maybe a whole load of incredibly… Read More

Pop Quiz: which of these relate to you…. Moving from one check-out line to another because it looks shorter/faster. Counting the cars in front of you and either getting in the lane that has the least or is going the fastest. Multi-tasking to the point of forgetting one of the tasks. Anybody? These are what authors Rosemary Sword and Philip Zimbardo offer as ‘symptoms of hurry sickness’. Hurry Sickness: defined as… “A behaviour pattern charactersied by continual rushing and anxiousness” “A malaise in which a person feels chronically short of time, and… Read More

Answer: “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.“ Hurry. What would you say is the greatest enemy to the spiritual life?  There may be a whole host of things, but would ‘hurry’ even make the list?  See what you think about these…. “All of my worst moments…are when I’m in a hurry.” [John Mark Comer] “Love, joy, and peace are incompatible with hurry” – Love takes patience, joy comes from being present to the moment, peace….well, does it need explaining? [John Mark Comer] “Our greatest danger is not that we renounce faith,… Read More