1: Hurry. Hurry. Hurry.
That’s the reality of the life we know.
“If there’s anything we pick up from reading the four Gospels,” however, John Mark Comer writes in The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, “it’s that Jesus was rarely in a hurry.”
“Can you imagine a stressed-out Jesus?” he asks. “Snapping at Mary Magdalene after a long day, ‘I can’t believe you dropped the hummus.’ Sighing, and saying to himself, ‘I seriously need a glass of wine.’
“Can you picture him half talking to you, half texting on his iPhone, the sporadic ‘Uh-huh’ punctuating a one-sided conversation?
“Can you hear him saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’d love to heal your leg, but I have a plane to catch. I’m speaking at TEDx in Jerusalem tomorrow. Here’s Thaddaeus, an apprentice of mine nobody’s ever heard of. He’s happy to pray for you. I’m out.’
Or: “Talk to my assistant, Judas. We’ll see if you can squeeze you in.”
Or: “What magazine are you with?” We say, ‘None.’ His eyes glaze over.”
“Um, no,” John Mark writes.
2: There are many stories that make it clear Jesus was not in a hurry.
Like when his friend Lazarus was sick.
“By friend, I mean close friend,” John Mark observes. “And by sick, I mean about-to-die sick.
“But when Jesus got the life-or-death message, we read this odd line: When he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judea.’
“Not exactly in a hurry, was he? And his friend’s life hung in the balance,” he declares.
Another time, Jesus is teaching in a synagogue. A man, Jairus, sinks to Jesus’s feet, pleading with him to cure his daughter, who is about to die.
“Again, life or death,” John Mark notes. “But on the way to Jairus‘s home, a woman with a chronic health condition that went back twelve years interrupted Jesus. There’s a beautiful story where Jesus just took all the time in the world with her. No rush at all.
“Can you imagine how Jairus must have felt? I imagine him tapping his foot, giving Jesus the Come on! look, chest tight with anxiety.
“In the end Jesus did make it to Jairus’s daughter and healed her as well. But every time I read that story,” he writes, “I’m struck my how fiercely present Jesus was, how he just would not let anything or anyone, even a medical emergency or a hurting father, rush him into the next moment.”
Being interrupted was a constant in Jesus’s life, John Mark writes. “Read the Gospels; half the stories are interruptions! Yet he never comes off as agitated or annoyed. (Well, he does with religious people—that’s another book—but not at interruptions.)
Jesus was in constant demand. “Yet he never came off hurried,” he observes. “This rootedness in the moment and connectedness to God, other people, and himself weren’t the by-products of a laid-back personality or a pre-Wi-Fi world; they were the outgrowth of a way of life. A whole new way to be human that Jesus put on display in story after story.”
More clues about Jesus’ priorities become apparent at the beginning of his ministry. Note that Jesus waited until he was thirty to deliver his first sermon.
“After one day on the job as Messiah, he went off to the wilderness for forty days to pray. Nothing could hurry this man,” John Mark writes.
He was intentional about living his life with margin—”the space between our load and our limits,” he notes. “For many of us, there is no space between our loads and limits. We’re not at 80 percent with room to breathe; we’re at 100 all the time.
“Jesus’ weekly schedule was a prophetic act against the hurried rhythms of our world. He would regularly get up early and go off to a quiet place to be with his Father,” John Mark shares. “There’s a story where the disciples woke up and he was gone. Left before dawn, just to be alone and greet the day in the quiet.”
In other instances, he would go away for the night or even several weeks to be alone and pray. “More than once we read stories about Jesus sleeping in and the disciples having to wake him up,” he observes.
John Mark writes: “I like this Jesus and want to follow him. Every chance he got, he would enjoy a nice long meal with friends over a bottle of wine, creating space for in-depth conversations about the highs and lows of life.”
Not only that. He was also deliberate about practicing the Sabbath each week—”an entire day set aside for nothing but rest and worship, every single week,” he writes. “He lived ‘freely and lightly.’ Free of all the discontent and distraction that comes from too much money and stuff we don’t need.
“We could go on,” John Mark notes, “but my point is simple: he put on display an unhurried life, where space for God and love for people were the top priorities, and because he said yes to the Father and his kingdom, he constantly said no to countless other invitations.
“Then he turned around and said, ‘Follow me.'”
3: So what does it mean to follow Jesus?
“It’s very simple,” John Mark writes. “It means we live the way Jesus lived. We take his life and teachings as our template, our model, our pattern. This means the central question of our apprenticeship to Jesus is pretty straightforward: How would Jesus live if he were me?”
Of course, there are dramatic differences between life then and life now. “Jesus was a first-century, single Jewish rabbi,” he observes, “not a twenty-first-century parent, account manager, student, pastor, or professional luchador, so we have to ideate and transpose a bit.
“Jesus wasn’t a dad; I am. I imagine if he were dad to (John Mark’s kids) Jude, Moses, and Sunday, he would spend a lot of time with them. So I do that as an act of my apprenticeship to Jesus, who never had kids. Say we’re a new wife or mother. Jesus was neither, but our driving question is, How would he do this? Or we’re working on high-rise condo development. How would Jesus design this community?”
One thing he would likely do if he were us? Slow down.
“What we’re really talking about here is a rule of life. Stephen Covey (of 7 Habits fame) said that we achieve inner peace when our schedule is aligned with our values.
“That line isn’t from the Bible,” John Mark notes, “but my guess is, if Jesus heard that , he would smile and nod.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: Am I structuring my days for hurry and distraction, or am I learning to rest, be present, and love?
Action: Set aside intentional time this week to create margin for quiet, connection, and reflection—aligning my schedule with my deepest values, as Jesus did.
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