Charles E. Hummel - Tyranny of the Urgent

Before his passing in August 2004, Charles Hummel was formerly director of faculty ministries for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and president of Barrington College in Rhode Island. He was the author of fifteen books and Bible studies, including The Galileo Connection, Fire in the Fireplace, Genesis (in the LifeGuide Bible Study Series), and the bestselling booklet, Tyranny of the Urgent.

978-0-8308-1287-5

Winner of the 2004 ECPA Platinum Book Award!

Is the clock a slavemaster or a tool that serves you?

Does the quantity of your responsibilities squeeze out the quality of your life?

Are urgent things so pressing that you dont have inner time to sort out whats really important?

How can you discern what God wants you to do?

Charles Hummels classic booklet Tyranny of the Urgent has sold over one million copies. Now for the first time he expands on the life-changing perspective that has transformed the lives of thousands struggling to keep from being swept away by the rush of life.

Gathered in this book are proven principles taken straight from biblical teaching, from todays time-management experts and from Hummels own life experience. Youll discover how to

• make the calendar your friend
• manage your life instead of your time
• get motivated
• stay open to Gods guidance in small choices
• avoid being dragged down by past choices
• develop inner time for reflection and planning

and much more!

If you have too much to do and not enough time to do it, this book is for you.

978-0-8308-6225-2

Do you struggle to know and follow Gods call for you in the world? Genesis tells us that even the giants of faithAbraham, Isaac, Jacob and Josephstruggled to obey their Creator. But Genesis also reveals the amazing truth that the God who called a world and a nation into being also calls each of us to serve him.

978-0-8308-6226-9

Do you struggle to know and follow Gods call for you in the world? Genesis tells us that even the giants of faithAbraham, Isaac, Jacob and Josephstruggled to obey their Creator. But Genesis also reveals the amazing truth that the God who called a world and a nation into being also calls each of us to serve him.

978-0-87784-500-3

The church disagreed with Galileo. That set off a controversy that rages on today. The passion remains but the issues have changed and the arguments have become more complex. Do miracles conflict with scientific laws? How did the universe begin? Does the creation story in Genesis conflict with evolution?

Hummel sets these controversies in historical perspective by telling the fascinating stories of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton. Through their eyes we see how science flourished and floundered under the influence of the church, setting the scene for modern conflicts.

Then Hummel turns to the Bible, discussing its relationship to science, the place of miracles and the biblical account of the origin of the universe. His treatment of modern controversies is respected and fair-minded. Yet he does not hesitate to criticize the views of others and argue for his own.

Charles E. Hummel

www.IVPress.com/books

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400
Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
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Rev. ed., 1994 by Charles E. Hummel

First edition 1967 by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from InterVarsity Press.

InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, a movement of students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. For information about local and regional activities, write Public Relations Dept. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at www.intervarsity.org.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Design: Cindy Kiple

Image: blackred/iStockphoto

ISBN 978-0-8308-9624-0 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-092-3 (print)

Have you ever wished for a thirty-hour day? Surely this extra time would relieve the tremendous pressure under which we live. Our lives leave a trail of unfinished tasks. Unanswered letters, unvisited friends, unread books haunt quiet moments when we stop to evaluate what we have accomplished. We desperately need relief.

But would that longer day really solve our problem? Wouldnt we soon be just as frustrated as we are now with our twenty-four-hour allotment? We could hardly escape Parkinsons Principle: Work expands to fill all the available time.

Nor will the passage of time necessarily help us catch up. Children grow in number and age to require more of our time. Greater experience in profession and church brings more demanding assignments. We find ourselves working more and enjoying it less.

When we stop long enough to think about it, we realize that our dilemma goes deeper than shortage of time; it is basically a problem of priorities. Hard work doesnt hurt us. We all know what it is to go full speed for long hours, totally involved in an important task. The resulting weariness is matched by a sense of achievement and joy. Not hard work, but doubt and misgiving produce anxiety as we review a month or a year and become oppressed by the pile of unfinished tasks. We sense uneasily our failure to do what was really important. The winds of other peoples demands, and our own inner compulsions, have driven us onto a reef frustration. We confess, quite apart from our sins, We have done those things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done.

An experienced factory manager once said to me, Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important. He didnt realize how hard his advice hit. It has often returned to haunt and rebuke me by raising the critical problem of priorities.

We live in constant tension between the urgent and the important. The problem is that many important tasks need not be done today, or even this week. Extra hours of prayer and Bible study, a visit to an elderly friend, reading an important book: these activities can usually wait a while longer. But often urgent, though less important, tasks call for immediate responseendless demands pressure every waking hour.