Courtney Ellis - Uncluttered: Free Your Space, Free Your Schedule, Free Your Soul

John Ortberg, The Life Youve Always Wanted (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 128.

Barbara Cawthorne Crafton, Living Lent, in Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Walden, NY: Plough Publishing, 2003), 18.

Matt. 6:2021.

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1 Pet. 3:3.

1 Sam. 16:7.

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(emphasis mine).

Syncletica, in The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks , ed. Benedicta Ward (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 105.

The Bob Newhart Show , Easy for You to Say, CBS, February 11, 1978, written by David Davis, Lorenzo Music, and Andrew Smith, directed by Dick Martin.

Isa. 55:12.

Rev. 21:5.

Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (New York: Random House, 1999), 196.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 138.

Thomas Carlyle, The Works of Thomas Carlyle (East Sussex, UK: Delphi Classics, 2015), 183.

Ambrose Bierce, Telephone, The Devils Dictionary (New York: Dover Publications, 1993), 124.

Susan Greenfield, Mind Change (New York: Random House, 2015), 17.

Ibid., 19.

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Mary Oliver, The Summer Day in New and Selected Poems , Vol. 1 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 94.

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Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2017), 2627.

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John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1970), 2.2.8.

Yancey, The death of reading.

Gal. 5:1.

Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street (Montgomery, AL: Mockingbird Classics, 2003), 1923.

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John Maynard Keynes, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, in Revisiting Keynes: Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren , ed. Lorenzo Pecchi and Gustavo Piga (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008), 25.

David E. Nye, Critics of Technology, in A Companion to American Technology , ed. Carroll Pursell (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 42952.

. (Also, can we all just pause for a moment and appreciate that this address happened at someplace called The COW PALACE? A place that, by the way, still exists? Google it.)

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Rom. 1:2223.

Victor Hugo, The Letters of Victor Hugo: From Exile, and After the Fall of the Empire (New York: Sagwan Press, 2018), 23.

1 Cor. 10:14.

1 Pet. 4:3.

Brett McCracken, Uncomfortable: The Awkward and Essential Challenge of Christian Community (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 151.

Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 175.

Ibid., 230.

Jim Gaffigan, Dad Is Fat (New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2013), 186.

Lewis, Mere Christianity , 206.

Eugene Peterson, Tell It Slant: A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 70.

Luke 13:19.

Matt. 6:2526.

Matt. 6:3133.

Lamott, Traveling Mercies , 82.

Luke 14:27.

1 Pet. 3:14.

Eugene Peterson, The Pastor (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 220.

Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2014), 19.

1 John 5:3 (ESV).

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Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods (New York: Harper Collins, 2004), 85.

Abraham Heschel, The Sabbath (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955), 14.

Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance , 4041.

Adele Calhoun, The Spiritual Disciplines Handbook (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 43.

Heschel, The Sabbath , 20.

Susannah Heschel, foreword to The Sabbath , by Abraham Heschel, vii.

Kreider, The Busy Trap.

Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 136.

Marva Dawn, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 61.

Lev. 19:3334.

Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2007), 181.

Luke 14:1314.

1 Pet. 4:9.

Rom. 12:3.

Newman, Untamed Hospitality , 174.

John 12:13.

Luke 19:110.

Acts 20:35.

Luke 10:42 (MSG).

1 Kings 19:4.

1 Kings 19:1113.

N. T. Wright, The Way of the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 4.

Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2017), 112.

T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday, in The Waste Land and Other Poems (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 76.

1 Thess. 5:17.

James 5:13.

Matt. 10:37.

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Matt. 19:14.

Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family , 191.

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Ps. 50:10.

Bren Brown, Daring Greatly (New York: Avery, 2012), 29 (emphasis mine).

Del Belcher, Cast on Him in Cast on Him , Brian Basilico Studio, 1984, audiocassette.

J. D. Rockefeller. The quote may be apocryphal. Another version of the story notes him as saying, Just one more dollar.

Mal. 3:810 (emphasis mine).

Col. 1:16.

Mark Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 2526.

The Westminster Confession, in The Book of Confessions: The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) (Louisville: The Office of the General Assembly, 2014), gender inclusive language mine.

Labberton, The Dangerous Act of Worship , 44.

William Barclay, Matthew , vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster, 1970), 386.

Jim Elliot, The Journals of Jim Elliot , ed. Elisabeth Elliot (Grand Rapids: Revell, 1978), 174.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Learning to Die, in A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer , ed. Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (New York: HarperOne, 1995), 268.

Carlo Carretto, The God Who Comes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1974), quoted in A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants , ed. Rueben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2003), 174.

Ps. 36:9.

Henri Nouwen, The Living Reminder (New York: Harper Collins, 1977), 28.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 173.

Scott Cairns, The End of Suffering (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2010), 11.

C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (New York: Harper Collins, 1980), 8687.

Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1990), 185.

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper Collins, 1974), 10.

Peace. Less. Still. Enough. Simple. Clear. Rested. Read Uncluttered.

John Ortberg, senior pastor of Menlo Church, and author of Id Like You More If You Were More Like Me

Close the computer, put down the smartphone, grab a big cup of coffee and start reading this delightful and disorienting book. With disarming candor, sly humor, and the empathy of the pastor and spiritual counselor that she is, Courtney Ellis has given us a gift and offered us a path. Part intervention, part confession, part coaching, and part hanging-out-with-a-friend-that-makes-you-laugh-too-loud-in-a-restaurant, Ellis offers us a winsome, challenging, instructive, and inspiring engagement for rediscovering the freer, fuller life that all of us are longing for and most of us lost somewhere along the way.

Tod Bolsinger, Vice President & Chief of Leadership Formation, Fuller Seminary, and author of Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory