Hurry Sickness
Luke 10:38-42
May 3, 2026
Matt Goodale
Here’s one definition offered for hurry sickness: A behavior pattern characterized by continual rushing and anxiousness…or a “continuous attempt to achieve more and more things or participate in more and more events in less and less time.”
If you want to know whether you suffer from “hurry sickness”, here are three telltale symptoms. You probably suffer from “hurry sickness” if you:
Move from one check-out line to another because it looks shorter/faster.
Multi-task to the point of forgetting one of the tasks.
Count the cars in front of you and either get in the lane that has the least or is going the fastest.
Anybody, or is it just me? Now, I don’t want to play armchair psychologist, but I’m pretty sure we all have hurry sickness.
Like, this last week, I was driving home from Cheney to pick up the girls and there was a backup on the freeway that started about a mile before the exit I needed. So I got off earlier, adding in all truth, probably more time to my commute than if I had just sat in traffic, but moving felt so much better than sitting in traffic. And because I was already running late to begin with, I was more irritable, more frustrated and it’s amazing how a little traffic that in reality would probably add five minutes to my commute can completely throw my mood out of whack.
But most of us just accept this as normal behavior. We get stuck in traffic so we get mad. We have to wait in line at the store, so we get annoyed. And we always feel it’s justified…because why? Because we’re busy! We have important places to be and important things to do. We just accept hurry as a normal part of modern life.
But we never slow down long enough to ask: what does this pace of life do to our souls? One pastor, John Mark Comer, suggests that hurry is a form of violence on our souls. Just think about that for a minute…
In our story today, our friend Martha, seems to have a bit of hurry sickness I would say. Jesus has come over to her house as a guest and Martha is hard at work preparing everything…probably sleeping arrangements, a meal. And as Martha is running around trying to get everything ready—I mean she has Jesus in her living room, I’d be freaking out too, making sure everything is perfect and ready—she notices that her sister isn’t helping out. She’s sitting listening to Jesus teach.
And Martha has a problem with this. I mean, I would too. If I’ve been at home watching the girls all day, the moment Meghan gets home I expect her to drop everything and help too because it’s only fair. So Martha looks to Jesus for help saying, “Haven’t you noticed that my sister has left everything for me to do. Please tell her to help!”
Now, Martha gets a bad rap. Her name is sometimes used by people as an insult.. “Oh don’t be such a Martha”. But in her defense, she was doing something really important. Hospitality was a big deal in the ancient world—like a really big deal. And so Martha is busy providing good hospitality to a teacher of great notoriety. Everyone in her culture would agree with her. Mary should be helping Martha.
And I mean, Martha is busy serving no less than Jesus! Is there a more important job than that?
And yet, Jesus doesn’t side with Martha, but with Mary. Martha looks to Jesus, expecting him to back her up, but he doesn’t. In fact, he says that Mary is doing the most important thing that can be done and it can’t be taken away from her.
Huh. That makes me think.
I’m curious, when someone asks you: “How are you?” How often do you respond, “Busy.” Or, “Good, just busy.” How often is that the response you get from others?
How often do you notice yourself running from thing to thing, trying to fit more into your day? How often do you feel at the end of a day that you should have accomplished more or been more productive? How often do you feel like your soul is running on empty? That your schedule is full, but your soul feels dry and empty…feels like you should be happier or more content than you actually are? If we’re honest I bet many of us feel this in our most reflective moments.
And we might wonder: how did we get here? Why does our culture insist that doing more and more will lead to a good life? Why are we so ok with the hurried frenetic pace of our lives?
We all know our world has sped up. We feel it in our souls, not to mention on the freeway. But it hasn’t always been this way.
As far back as 200 BC, people were complaining about what the ‘new’ technology of the sundial was doing to society. The Roman playwright, Plautus complains in a poem: “[May] the gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish hours! Who cut my days into small portions.”
Fast forward fifteen hundred years to when the first public clock tower was erected in Cologne, Germany. Before that, time was natural. It was linked to the rotation of the earth and the four seasons. You went to bed with the moon and got up with the sun. Days were long and busy in the summer and short and slow in winter. But the clock changed all that: it created artificial time—the slog of nine-to-five all year long. We stopped listening to our bodies and the seasons and started rising when our alarms droned—not when our bodies were done resting. We became more efficient with the invention of the clock, yes, but also more machine, less human being.
And think about now we have all this modern technology that can save us time—cars, smartphones, appliances— We also stay up later because of the lightbulb—thank you Thomas Edison—so we actually have more hours in our days! You’d think we’d feel less hurried with all these time-saving devices and extra hours. But most of us feel the opposite. So what gives? Where does all that extra time go??
Well, we don’t use that extra time to rest—we just fill it with other things. We pack our schedules, fill our days and end up exhausted. Like Martha, we have a lot to do and not enough time.
And somewhere along the way, we started to believe that being busy is what makes our lives meaningful.
As I reflect upon my own pace of life, I realize that pretty much all my worst moments as a father, husband, pastor and friend are when I’m in a hurry—late for my appointment, behind on my unrealistic to-do list, trying to cram too much into my day. I ooze frustration and annoyance and become critical, trying like Martha to blame my stressed state of running around on someone else.
And usually when I get to the end of a long day, I just feel empty. At the end of my too-busy week, I realize that I didn’t take any time to attend to the health of my soul.
I think it’s poignant that in Paul’s famous verse on love that’s quoted from 1 Corinthians 13 at every wedding…do you remember what the first descriptor Paul uses for love?
“Love is……patient.”
Of all the ways to describe love. What first comes to mind for Paul, is patient. The opposite of hurried. The opposite of agitated or annoyed. Love is patient.
There’s a reason people talk about “walking” with God, not “running” with God. It’s because God is love and love walks at a slow pace.
We don’t like to go slow though, do we? We’d rather jump into the next line at the grocery store or drive faster to make our appointment on time or do everything we can to fill our lives with stuff that we think justifies our existence. Because we have so much important stuff to do!
Which is why Martha pleads with Jesus to see how important her work is and to make her sister be busy like her. Doesn’t Jesus get it?
I think Jesus does. Which is why, when he responds to Martha, I don’t hear a reprimand in his voice, I hear sympathy. “Martha, Martha, you are anxious about and troubled by many things…”
Jesus sees all the important stuff she needs to do. He sees how it makes her anxious and distracted and troubled. But he won’t let her inflict that on her sister, Mary.
And he points to Mary as an example and says to Martha, it doesn’t have to be that way for you.
If “hurry sickness” is a form of violence on our own souls, then imagine how our hurry inflicts violence on other people’s souls. “Love is patient.” We don’t do much loving when we’re in a hurry, do we?
If love is patient, then I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say it’s not possible to love when we’re in a hurry.
So how do we begin to slow down? How do we learn to walk at Jesus’ pace instead of running through our lives?
I think Jesus gives us a picture of it here. Mary sits at his feet and listens. She’s present.
And right after this story, Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray.
Now I know prayer can be a tricky subject for many of us and I think the way most of us learned to pray is busy. We say a bunch of words and ask for a bunch of things and say “Hey thanks God, bye.”
But prayer at its core, is not about saying the right words or getting through a list of requests. It’s about slowing down and being present.
Being present to God. Being present to the moment and the space you are right now. Being present to the person in front of you. Or the flowers and birds along your walk.
Sometimes prayer looks like silence. Sometimes it’s paying attention to someone who is hurting. Sometimes it’s walking outside and letting your soul catch up with your body.
Mary is present to Jesus. Martha is so busy she almost misses him. And Jesus gently reminds her—and us—it doesn’t have to be that way.
Because the truth is, when we are always in a hurry, we don’t just miss God—we start to miss our own lives. We miss the people right in front of us. We miss the quiet invitations to love.
And over time, our souls begin to feel dry.
But when we slow down…when we choose to be present…something begins to change in us. Even if it doesn’t feel dramatic. Even if it feels small.
Jesus shows us that slowing down isn’t wasting time—it’s making space for something deeper to grow.
It’s a bit like a field lying fallow.
On the surface, it looks like nothing is happening. Just dirt, sitting still. But underneath, there is life. Microorganisms are moving, nutrients are forming, the soil is being restored—quietly, invisibly—getting ready for something to grow.
The same is true for our souls.
When we give ourselves permission to slow down…to be patient…to be present…God is at work beneath the surface. Preparing us. Softening us. Making room for love to take root.
And love—real love—can’t grow in a hurried life.
“Love is patient.”
So my prayer for us this week is:
that we would have the courage to slow down,
the grace to be patient with ourselves when it’s hard,
and the awareness to notice that God is already present with us in the moments we’re usually too busy to see.
Amen—and may it be so.