The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World, by John Mark Comer
John Murray Press, 2019
April 2020. We all knew the right route through the supermarket. Toilet paper, pasta, rice, the rest. We took the big trolley every time just in case. More often than not we hit the checkouts with a full trolley but we felt a hole in it where life’s essentials should have been. That’s the feeling John Mark Comer felt as the pastor of a mega-church in the US, and his book is a route to discover some of the practices that have historically helped Christ’s family into deeper fellowship with their Heavenly Father.
This is the least guilt-inducing and most practical book on the subject of solitude, sabbath, hospitality, generosity, and prayer I have ever read. His own journey to stop filling life’s trolley with junk food and get the essentials in first through the ruthless elimination of hurry illustrates his teaching.
His story is told with passion, tempered by a keen sense of the ridiculous in his own life. His key idea—hurried people rarely make good decisions—is relevant to all of us. As a Gen X, hearing a Gen Y talk about their struggles helped me understand the need for this book in a way I had not before. This is a vision of how people could live as Jesus’ followers today, by mining the wisdom of past generations.
– Reviewed by Robert Coleman