03/25/2025
Ten years ago this month, I had the distinct “privilege” of experiencing a heart attack and ensuing stent surgery, which is why the following quote spoke to me:
“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. [These individuals] are more prone to heart attacks as they display a harrying sense of time urgency (Friedman and Rosenman, Type A, 42).
If we think this is a recent discovery, Friedman and Rosenman first coined the term “hurry sickness” in 1974. That’s 51 years ago, before home computers, the internet, social media, iPhones, and how we generally view the world today as operating at a breakneck speed.
John Mark Comer recounts the story of an English traveler landing in Africa at the height of British colonialism. He is intent on a rapid journey into the jungle, so he charters some local porters to carry his supplies. After an exhausting day of travel, all on foot, and a fitful night’s sleep, he gets up to continue the journey. But the porters refuse. Exasperated, he begins to cajole, bribe, and plead, but nothing works. They will not move an inch. Naturally, he asks why. Answer? They are waiting “for their souls to catch up with their bodies” (The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, 45).
Maybe you’ve experienced those days or weeks where you feel such a frenetic pace that you need the precious commodity of time for your soul to catch up with your body.
The bad news is that if we don’t address our hurry sickness, our bifurcated body and soul may never reintegrate into a wholeness of health. The good news is that we don’t have to continue this “violence on the soul” (ibid., 47).
The remedy to our malady is intentionality. Poet Mary Oliver once wrote, “Attention is the beginning of devotion” (Upstream: Selected Essays, 2016). As we give attention to our souls, we create space for healthy rhythms, sabbath, generosity, prayer, and rest. Soul medicine is just as important as heart medicine, but the pills do no good if they just sit in a daily pill box unconsumed.
After a busy season of ministry, Jesus tells his disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while” (Mark 6:31, ESV). Maybe another way we could say this is, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place so that your souls have time to catch up with your bodies.”
A soulless existence is no existence. So, why don’t you take time this week to have your soul and your body find each other once again? In Jesus, you can find “rest for your soul” (Matthew 11:29) and the strength to continue the journey.
