Your response to the enforced Lockdown?
How are you getting on in this period of enforced lockdown? Are you frustrated, longing to get back on the treadmill of life, or – dare I whisper it – enjoying this period of enforced slowing down, even finding it gives ‘rest to your soul’? ‘What planet are you on, Nigel?’ I can sense some of you saying. ‘Don’t you know that I am cooped up indoors with screaming children, home-educating, trying to keep a job going?’ My heart goes out to you. But for others this is a period of helpful enforced slowing down.
Here I want to urge all of you to make it count and suggest that this time gives an opportunity to reset your life-style and values.
Something positive to do
At such a time as this I cannot recommend highly enough a book that I am finding many reading, ‘The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry’ by John Mark Comer. It is strangely appropriate for such a time as this and perhaps, just perhaps, you can now find the time to read it and take it seriously.
But a word of caution. If you are a man you probably think that reading it is the same as doing it. Wrong! Women, on the other hand, know that it is the doing that counts. So, as you read it I urge you to have a notebook or journal to hand and record anything that particularly resonates with you. It is packed full of good ideas but you can’t do them all. So note the ones that God draws to your attention. Or you may like to use the work-book at johnmarkcomer.com/howtounhurry. Or perhaps a combination of the two is best for you. Then, when you have finished, or even while you are reading further chapters, you can begin to put some of the suggestions into practice.
What’s it about?
Written out of his personal experience of leading a highly successful multi-site church, including preaching six times on a Sunday – yes, six! – and then hitting the buffers after ten years and resigning, John Mark Comer realised there was more to life than this. Having recovered he set about adjusting life to Jesus’ style, who seemed so unhurried, and now records where that has taken him.
What’s the Problem?
First, he analyses the Problem. He realises that the frenetic pace of life is robbing him of his joy; it is the enemy of a healthy walk with God. Life can so often be about satisfying the expectations of others rather than spending time enjoying the presence of God and the full orbed colour of life. Jesus said ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light’. That was not Comer’s experience.
He highlights ten symptoms of ‘hurry-sickness’: Irritability, Restlessness, Workaholism…etc. and concludes this section by quoting Jesus,
‘What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?’ (Mark 8:36)
The Solution
Writing in an easily read style – almost like sitting and chatting with you – Comer recognises that the solution is not to create more time (impossible!) but rather to follow the ‘practices of Jesus’. Jesus demonstrated these practices, such as prayer, community, unhurriedness, generosity to the poor, and exhorts us to ‘follow him’. He also observed the sabbath, not legalistically but because the sabbath was made for man’s good. Comer discusses in depth what this might look like for us today.
Four Practices for un-hurrying
Comer ends the book by sharing in great detail how he and his family carry out four practices:
• Silence and Solitude
• Sabbath
• Simplicity
• Slowing
Each of these practices contains many great ideas. But don’t forget what I said at the beginning; you cannot do them all at the same time. Do note the things that particularly stand out for you and then start to do them.
Make this time count
In lockdown we long for it to end and ‘return to normal’. But I think that it is generally recognised that our former ‘normal’ may never return. So why not be intentional and take this time to reflect and define a new normal for your life? It may just be that in years to come you will be full of gratitude to God for the opportunity this time gives to read such a book and reset your life.
Don’t waste the opportunity. Act on it!