SAYING NO TO HURRY & YES TO SLOW | #NO2YES
I have a blog journal which full of hand written posts and brainstorms. This following one is a continuation to “2020 | Saying No to Say Yes” was written back in February and I really thought that I had posted it already haha! I was thinking of changing parts of it to apply to now, but I think it’s actually incredible how actually this relates to our current situation!
FEBRUARY 2020
Saying no to say yes is infiltrating more areas in my life apart from rejecting huge sugar intakes. It’s now come down to my pace of life. We’re all so hurried! There is so much we want to do and so much we consume from food to movies to information on social media and the news. Sometimes it’s even a victory to have space to think and be by ourselves!
At my church, we are currently exploring how to ruthlessly eliminate hurry - based on John Mark Comer’s new book and a handy saying from Dallas Willard observing how busy Jesus was but how He wasn’t hurried. Though loads of people came to ask Jesus for miracles, healings and wonders, He made time for EVERYONE He interacted with. He was present.
Do you understand the significance of being present in this age? To stop, take account with ourselves and interact with others in a meaningful way? In order to be present, some of us need to (literally) throw our phones to the other side of the room so that we can sit and catch up with our parents about the day. For others, it may mean not binge watching that TV show and calling a friend. For some it’s to stop playing on the game console for huge amounts of time and sitting with ourselves.
This is a very brief summary of what John Mark Comer talks about but there is so much goodness in it. I recommend “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry”, it will really challenge you to evaluate your life and think about how you can eliminate hurry.
I’ve got a few more posts written under the umbrella of “Saying No to Say Yes”, so I would like to officially say - welcome to the new series!
As I typed the above, I just found it so weird that this book was released before the potential of global lockdown was even a thing. What are the odds? The world in general (though we all know there are exceptions) has been forced to SLOW DOWN. There are less people at train stations, less cars on the roads, less traffic. There are less people in supermarkets and with the social distancing measures, you have to shop at a much slower pace and wait. I would say it’s a book that mentally gave me a head start to slow down my pace of life - even more so as I’m 4 weeks into furlough and trying not to cram every minute of every day with stuff 😂
Have you read John Mark Comer’s book? Which part of it resonated with you? Leave me a comment!
If you are currently finding it difficult not to cram your day, firstly let me say that is ok. We are in unprecedented times and the knee jerk reaction is to fill up our time as much as possible so we can forget about the unsettling reality we are facing. Can I encourage you to take a look at the unhurry workbook (free to download) and see if that helps? There’s no harm in trying!
