Sermon quotes on hurry
Walter Adams
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.
Percy Ainsworth
This busy world will surge about you with the tread of restless feet and the throb of restless hearts. And little that you will do will seem to make a pause in the rush of things. But you may in Christ find rest for your soul. You will rest in your work, knowing that duty is eternal; rest in your service of others, knowing that sacrifice is eternal; rest in your purest earthly communion, knowing that love is eternal. This is the hasteless life, and those that “believeth in Christ” will live it.
Taken from “Faith and Haste,” Weavings, January/February 2003, p. 11.
G.K. Chesterton
One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.
John Mark Comer
Advertising is literally an attempt to monetize our restlessness.
Adapted from The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World. Copyright © 2019 by John Mark Comer. Used by permission of WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
John Mark Comer
…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.
Adapted from The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World. Copyright © 2019 by John Mark Comer. Used by permission of WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
James Fenimore Cooper
“The novice in the military art flew from point to point, retarding his own preparations by the excess of his violent and somewhat distempered zeal; while the more practiced veteran made his arrangements with a deliberation that scorned every appearance of haste”
Vincent de Paul
[The one] who hurries delays the things of God.
Francis de Sales
Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset. What is anything in life compared to peace of soul?”
Alan Fadling
The drive to possess is an engine for hurry.
Taken from An Unhurried Life: Following Jesus’ Rhythms of Work and Rest by Alan Fadling Copyright (c) 2013 by Alan Fadling. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Finnish Proverb
God did not create hurry.
Meyer Friedman and Ray H. Rosenman
Hurry sickness is a continuous struggle and unremitting attempt to accomplish or achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time.
William Irvine
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 words, a danger that when you are on your deathbed, you will look back and realize that you wasted your one chance at living. Instead of spending your life pursuing something genuinely valuable, you squandered it because you allowed yourself to be distracted by the various baubles life has to offer.
Carl Jung
Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil.
Nikos Kazantzakis
“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. Like a tree I would be blasted by wind, struck by sun and rain, and would wait with confidence; the long-desired hour of flowering and fruit would come.“
Kosuke Koyama
God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It is “slow” yet it is lord over all other speeds since it is the speed of love.
Søren Kierkegaard
Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily.
Gerald May
As we are increasingly caught by love, our usual standards of efficiency will take a beating. . . . There are points where I may need to become a little less job-efficient if I want to be more loving.
The Awakened Heart (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), p. 78.
Thomas Merton
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 its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
Wayne Muller
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 when they are hurt and afraid and need our company; war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us; war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous; war on the earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessings and give thanks.
Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives
John Ortberg
I cannot live in the kingdom of God with a hurried soul.
Taken from The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, The Crown Publishing Group, 2019, p. 25.
Eugene Peterson
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 credit (in eternity). They are impatient for results. They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points. But a pastor is not a tour guide.
Taken from Run with the Horses by Eugene H. Peterson. ©2009, 2019 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove IL 60515-1426. www.ivpress.com
J.B. Phillips
[God is] never in a hurry.
Your God Is Too Small (New York: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 55-56.
Karl Rahner
In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable, we learn that ultimately in this world there is no finished symphony.
Servants of the Lord (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), 152.
Ronald Rolheiser
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 which falsely assures us that there is a heaven on earth. When that happens, and it does, our tensions begin to drive us mad, in this case to a cancerous restlessness.
Forgotten Among the Lilies: Learning to Love Beyond Our Fears (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 16.
John Steinbeck
If it is right, it happens—the main thing is not to hurry. nothing good gets away.”
Letter to Thom Steinbeck, November 10, 1958. Quoted In Steinbeck: A Life in Letters, edited by Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten. (New York: Penguin Books, 1989).
Pamela Steinke
Hurry decimates joy, leaves wonder by the wayside. Slow down and breathe deep; the wonder is all about you. See it, hold it close, pay tribute. My creation.”
Ann Voskamp
In our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.
One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
Wendy Wasserstein
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 themselves?” It seems “their purpose is to keep themselves so busy, so entrenched in their active lives, that their spirit reaches a permanent state of lethargiosis.
Rosemary K.M. Sword and Philip Zimbardo Ph.D.
By definition, hurry sickness is “a behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness; an overwhelming and continual sense of urgency.”
Article: Hurry Sickness: Is the quest to do all and be all costing us our health?”, Psychology Today, February 9, 2013.
John Mark Comer
I cannot live in the kingdom of God with a hurried soul.
Adapted from The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World. Copyright © 2019 by John Mark Comer. Used by permission of WaterBrook, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Ashley Hales
Underneath our frantic pace is a question: Is this work I do good enough?
Taken from Finding Holy in the Suburbs: Living Faithfully in the Land of Too Much by Ashley Hales Copyright (c) 2009 by Ashley Hales. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Still Looking for inspiration?
Consider checking out our illustrations page on Hurry.