“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life” (1 Thessalonians 4:11).

In our culture, ‘slow’ is a pejorative word. When the service at a restaurant is lousy, we call it slow. When a movie is boring, we complain it is slow. We call someone with a low IQ a slow person. Slow is bad; fast is good. “Hurry sickness” is a disease that virtually all of us have.

But hurry sickness works against the highest value in Christ’s kingdom—love. There’s a saying in parenting literature: “To a child, love is spelled T-I-M-E.” Hurry is incompatible with love (together with peace and joy). Hurry is not just a disordered schedule. Hurry is a disordered heart. And what you give your attention to is the person you become.

Showing love by spending time with someone is true not only for parents, but also for spouses, family, and friends. In fact, it holds true for spending time with God himself. What would life be like if I touched God with my heart and mind as frequently as I touch my phone? For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it.

In his book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, author John Mark Comer offers these four ideas as an antidote to hurry.

1. Sabbath = Designate a regular time period per week without shopping, internet, or chores. Play a game, go for a walk, cook a long meal, or take a nap instead.
2. Simplicity = Don’t organize your stuff; get rid of it instead.
3. Slowing = Deliberately create situations in which you just have to wait for a few minutes.
4. Silence = Find a time each week without stimulation from any outside minds (i.e., no media or people).

I'm very good at to-do lists and realized that I merely switch between those lists in any given time and place. These things at work, these things at home, even these things on my YouTube list when I take a break from the other lists. The first thing I'm going to try for myself is a weekly time period without chores, that is, without my to-do lists.

John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (Colorado Springs, CO: WaterBrook, 2019).