In early 2016, when Gem and I launched Unhurried Living, I spent a few days on retreat with a small group of Christian leaders. We met at a little Episcopal retreat house called St. Columba’s in Inverness, CA. It overlooks Tomales Bay on the Pacific Coast just above San Francisco. I’m grateful for little holy places like this where we can rest, reflect and pray.

While I was there, I found myself reading a few lines from the letter to the Hebrews:

Therefore he had to become like...

We often talk here about how a hurried soul costs us more than we realize, and that an unhurried soul is a way of following the genius of Jesus’ way of life and work. But there is a hurry that is actually holy, and there is a way of being unhurried that is actually unholy. We’ll tackle this pair on today’s episode of the Unhurried Living Podcast.

• Unholy hurry is that variety of soul hurry that we must ruthlessly eliminate as Dallas Willard urged us.

• Holy...

As Unhurried Living has grown, so have my opportunities to speak with people. From the quiet space of a spiritual direction room, to a talk on retreat, to a workshop in a church building, I (Gem) have had multiple chances to talk about what I know.

Over the last few years I have ridden waves of anxiety about the situations mentioned above, as well as everything in between. It usually comes in “what if” form. What if I forget what to say? What if I don’t have an answer...or...

God takes rest seriously. Rest is built into the very fabric of creation. The first full day after the creation of humanity is a day of rest—a Sabbath. God rests. We rest. And rest is the place in which relationship is established and cultivated. This is why God urges us to enter his rest. It isn’t merely a moralism. It is an invitation to be rooted in love and grace. But it’s an invitation that we too often fail to open.

I’ve often been struck by an almost throw-away...

We may be familiar with some of the Hebrew names for God: Elohim, El-Shaddai, Yahweh, Jehovah and Adonai. But what about the regular, day to day terms God uses in scripture to describe himself?

Today’s email is a little different than usual. I’d like to invite you to spend a few moments here engaging with this list of descriptive words. It will likely take just as long as it would take you to read one of my regular emails. Give yourself the gift of engaging here for a moment.

...

A practice that has meant a lot to me over the years has been praying scripture very personally. In the past, I was sometimes guilty of reading scripture at arm’s length. By that, I mean that I would study what certain words meant in original languages, I would read what others thought about the scriptures in commentaries, and I would talk about the scriptures as true and good. But I wouldn’t take them in. I wouldn’t see them intersecting with my actual life as I found it at...

In Holy Week, we remember Maundy Thursday and an upper room where Jesus shares a meal with his friends and shows his love by washing their feet. On Good Friday, we remember the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross. On Easter, we celebrate a risen Savior. But on Holy Saturday, we have a tomb. And the tomb at this point in the story isn’t yet empty.

Holy Saturday is the silence between the “It is finished” of Good Friday and the “He is Risen” of Easter...

Little known fact: I have a one-inch scar on my left wrist. One day, as a youngster enjoying a warm summer day, I followed my friend out the front door. I tried catching the half glass and half screen door with my hands before it hit me in the face.

Unfortunately, my hand broke the glass and went straight through that portion of the door. It was a miracle that I only have one scar. And the cut was in just the right shape and size that it didn’t hit any major vessels.

I hadn’t...

Ps 71:5

For you have been my hope, Sovereign Lord,
my confidence since my youth.

I found confidence in God a little over forty years ago. I was seventeen then. I’m fifty-eight today. Since my teens, my confidence in God has grown. What was a set of beliefs that made sense has increasingly become a Person in whom I live and move and have my very existence. I’m so very grateful!

Has this growth in confidence always been a nice steady, upward-trending line? Is it for anyone? I...

Much of our lives are lived by habits. Some of them are bad ones and tend to be life-draining. Some of them are good and help us really live. In today’s episode, Alan will share a recent conversation with Justin Whitmel Earley, author of the recently-released InterVarsity Press book, The Common Rule: Habits of Purpose for an Age of Distraction.

A rule of life provides a structure of practices that enable us to live and work rooted in the life of God’s kingdom. It helps us enter...