Building an antifragile faith takes time. It can’t be rushed. Consider this: It takes (on average) around twelve to eighteen months to construct a new single-family home in America. This process incl...
A "successful" life has become a violent enterprise. We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits; war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them ...
Today, a number of historical circumstances are blindly flowing together and accidentally conspiring to produce a climate within which it is difficult not just to think about God or to pray, but simpl...
Genesis 4:6-7 , Ecclesiastes 2:10-11, Daniel 3:16-18, Romans 12:1-2 , Luke 9:23-24 , Psalm 73:25-26
Modern man is a bleak business. To our chagrin we discover that the declaration of autonomy has issued not in a race of free, masterly men, but rather in a race that can be described by its poets and ...
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of ...
Looking into his life and out to the wider world, Kenneth Gergen writes about The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, arguing that “social saturation brings with it a general lo...
Habakkuk 2:5, James 3:16, Mark 8:36, Luke 12:15, Isaiah 57:20, 1 Timothy 6:9, 1 John 2:16
Restlessness keeps the pedal to the metal. To offer a suggestive analogy in this vein: several years ago there was a recall on some Toyota vehicles. Evidently the cars would be given to sudden and unc...
In his highly book, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares the importance of finding balance, even as life seems to pull us in different directions: Overextending yourself is stretching your physic...
We all crave a meaningful life. This is good and holy. But in the quest for meaning, we get mixed up, turned around, and accidentally end up constantly in a hurry. We rush to grow successful businesse...
Are these hyperscheduled, overactive individuals really creating anything new? Are they guilty of passion in any way? Do they have a new vision for their government? For their community? Or for themse...
Psalm 37:7, Proverbs 19:2, Lamentations 3:25-26, 2 Peter 3:9, James 5:7-8, Ecclesiastes 3:1
In our culture slow is a pejorative. When somebody has a low IQ, we dub him or her slow. When the service at a restaurant is lousy, we call it slow. When a movie is boring, again, we complain that it’...
So much of our unhappiness comes from comparing our lives, our friendships, our loves, our commitments, our duties, our bodies and our sexuality to some idealized and non-Christian vision of things wh...
Another form of unholy unhurry that many of us have heard little about is acedia. Derived from the Greek a (for “not”) and keedos (meaning “to care”), acedia is ultimately a failure of love. It’s a pl...
Isaiah 26:3, Mark 6:31, Habakkuk 2:3, Psalm 27:14, Genesis 8:22
In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling describes one of our greatest temptations in the modern age—hurry: Hurry is a great temptation. Hurry looks like impulsive, knee-jerk reactions...
There is a danger that you will mislive—that despite all your activity, despite all the pleasant diversions you might have enjoyed while alive, you will end up living a bad life. There is, in other wo...
A primary resistance to a less hurried way of life—a resistance I find in myself and in others—is the belief that “I won’t be as productive” or that “I will fail to seize the opportunities God sets be...
There are people who do not live their present life; it is as if they were preparing themselves, with all their zeal, to live some other life, but not this one. And while they do this, time goes by an...
Exodus 18:13–27, Ecclesiastes 2:22–23 , Isaiah 40:28–31 , Luke 10:38–42, Matthew 11:28–30, Psalm 127:1–2
The picture shows cartoon villain Cruella de Vil, bloodshot eyes staring straight ahead, hands clutching the wheel of her infamous coupe, black-and-white hair waving wildly in the wind, oversi...
“Man hurries, God does not. That is why man's works are uncertain and maimed, while God's are flawless and sure. My eyes welling with tears, I vowed never to transgress this eternal law again....
Everyone is in a hurry. The persons whom I lead in worship, among whom I counsel, visit, pray, preach and teach, want shortcuts. They want me to help them fill out the form that will get them instant ...
Have you ever heard the term "Haole" before? I first heard about it while picking up surfing in High School. I knew it wasn't exactly a positive label, but until recently I never knew wh...
Psychologists and mental health professionals are now talking about an epidemic of the modern world: “hurry sickness.” As in, they label it a disease. Here’s one definition: A behavior pattern chara...
Gracious God, when I think of how you created all things in a step-by-step manner, I am reminded of my own impatience. There are so many times, Lord, when I want you to move at my pace, not yours. I c...
Exodus 20:8–10, 1 Kings 19:11–12, Ecclesiastes 3:1, Mark 6:31, Matthew 11:28–29, Psalm 23:2–3
People in a hurry never have time for recovery. Their minds have little time to meditate and pray so that problems can be put in perspective. In short, people in our age are showing signs of physiolog...
Jean-Dominique Bauby was widely esteemed as one of France’s most prolific and influential journalists. His work widely shaped the quickly evolving cultural landscape of Europe during the 1980s and ’90...
The smartest and best man I have known [presumably Dallas Willard] jotted down some thoughts about hurry; I think they were posted in his kitchen when he died. “Hurry,” he wrote, “involves excessive h...