I used to think being busy meant I was doing something right: Full calendar, full inbox, full mind – full life. Or so I thought. 

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When people asked, ‘How are you?’, I almost automatically answered, ‘Good – just busy.’ It was as if busyness proved I was capable, needed, and keeping up. 

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But John Mark Comer’s The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry challenged me to look beneath this busyness. A full life is one thing; a hurried soul is another. Busyness is having a lot to carry; hurry is letting the weight of it shape your soul. And hurry does not just tire us out – it hollows us out. 

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Comer’s central question is simple and confronting: What if the greatest threat to our spiritual life is hurry? Drawing on John Ortberg’s insight that hurry is not only a disordered schedule but a disordered heart, Comer argues that a hurried life fragments our attention, dulls our prayers, and leaves little room for love, God’s presence, and the slow work of discipleship. Hurry is antithetical to love, peace, and joy. It robs us of being truly present with God, with others, and with the life God has given us. The danger is not necessarily that we will abandon our faith altogether, but that we will become so distracted, rushed, and preoccupied that we settle for a mediocre version of it. 

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The book’s power is that Comer does not simply tell us to slow down. He points us back to Jesus who offers, not an escape from the weight of life, but a different way to carry it. To follow Jesus is not only to believe what he taught - it is to adopt his pace of life. 

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Comer offers four practical suggestions: make time for uninterrupted solitude and silence; observe the Sabbath; practise simplicity; and slow down. These are not productivity hacks, but ways to make space for God. Comer’s treatment of the Sabbath is especially insightful. He frames it, not as a burdensome rule, but as a gift: A weekly act of worship, delight, resistance to the excesses of life, and a reminder that the world does not depend on us. 

 

What makes the book so convincing and challenging is how ordinary and practical Comer’s examples are: checking your phone first thing in the morning; filling silence with noise; buying more than you need; refusing to rest. None of these habits alone seem dramatic, but over time they train us in restlessness. 

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Against this, Comer invites readers to arrange their lives so that the love of God can grow - not by copying someone else’s routine, but by discerning what faithfulness looks like in our own lives. 

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I experienced this personally during a recent two-month holiday in South America. One day a close friend asked, ‘Joy, do you always have to have music playing, even in the background? Have you ever just sat in silence for a bit?’ It was a small question, but it stopped me in my tracks. I realised I was not just filling the quiet; I was avoiding it. A non-Christian friend had named what I had been reluctant to admit: I was uncomfortable with stillness - and perhaps with what stillness before God might reveal. 

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That is why Comer’s book is not really about time management or even rest. It asks whether our lives are too noisy, too crowded, and too rushed for us to just be with God. ‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10). 

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I expected Comer’s book to be about slowing down. Instead, I found a mirror. Comer showed me that hurry is not just a pace I keep, but something I am being formed by. I now see how often I choose noise over stillness, striving over trust, and exhaustion over surrender. This discovery is confronting - but deeply freeing.

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Jesus isn’t asking me to carry more, move faster, or prove myself worthy of rest. Neither is he asking me simply to slack off and put no effort into life. Rather, he is inviting me to come to him to learn his pace, follow his rhythm and, through it all, allow my anxious soul to rest in him.
 

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
(Matthew 11:28–30)