We All Need a Vacation, But...
Mark 6:30-34
Today we are going to a picnic. We all need a
break. Jesus also asked his disciples to leave the crowd and go some quiet
place. He said, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest”
(vs. 31).
Life is full of pressure. We live a hectic life.
Charles Swindoll
in his book The Quest for Character describes Dr. John Calhoun whose
experiment is an awakening call to our modern society.
Dr. Calhoun makes a cage for
mice. The cage is built for 160 of them (nine-foot square.) These mice grew
from 8 to 2200. Over
population in two and half years. What was the result?
The males who had protected
their territory withdrew from leadership.
The females became aggressive
and forced out the young . . . even their own offspring.
The young grew to be only
self-indulgent. They ate, drank, slept, groomed themselves, but showed no
normal aggression and, most noteworthy, failed to reproduce.
After five years, every mouse
had died. This occurred despite the fact that right up to the end there was
plenty of food, water, and an absence of disease.1
This is a parable of modern life. Rush, rush, no time for reflection and meditation on
God.
Jesus saw his disciples were tired. He was tired, too. They needed to have time to be
alone. Let me clarify a thought here.
Going to a vacation in the
Let me quote from an article
in Time magazine by Bronson.
“We Americans are so active
in our leisure that we commonly complain we need a vacation from our vacation.
We leave home tired; we come back exhausted.
… We spend more money than
anyone else in the world on leisure-fully one-third of our income-and yet we
are simultaneously No. 1 in the world at not taking vacations.”
Why? Because he realized that
when we go on a vacation work will be accumulated. So many
are not going on vacations. Bronson’s
bottom line: “It’s simply become too stressful to relax.”2
We need vacations,
we need time to be away from everything. We read in the Bible that “they went
away by themselves in a boat to solitary place.” We read in different places
how Jesus spent time in prayer alone. Sometimes with
disciples, sometimes in the morning or late at night.
Vacation, or recreation does
not mean always, traveling, skiing, hotels,
2- The vacation of Jesus and the disciples was
interrupted. Once the crowd knew where they went, others came for more needs.
Jesus had compassion on them.
Because “they were like sheep without a shepherd. So
he began teaching them” (vs. 34).
I started thinking, Does God
take a vacation from us?
Does Jesus take a vacation?
Humanly speaking Jesus wanted
to have time alone. Yet, Jesus was ready to be interrupted and show compassion.
We read in Psalm 121:3-4
“…He who watches over you
will not slumber…
…will neither slumber nor sleep…”
In verse 7 we read again
“he will watch over your life…”
God does not take a vacation.
Therefore, Jesus knowing our
weakness and our being so fragile he looks to the crowd and sees a group of
people without leadership, without a Shepherd.
I love Psalm 23. “The Lord is my Shepherd”. What a
wonderful statement of faith of having the Lord as our shepherd who will lead
us.
Who is your leader today? Who
leads you?
I read interesting variation
of Psalm 23 for Bay area computer friends:
“The Lord is my computer, I
shall not want.
It makes me to lie down on the analyst's chair;
It drugs me with penicillin and Demerol;
It takes me on a trip.
It leads me onto the interstate of the new morality for the sake of the Playboy
philosophy.
Even though I jet through the asphalt canyon eighty miles an hour, I'll remain
cool.
My cassette player is with me;
It's swinging sounds and newscasts, they comfort me.
It places me in a laboratory in the presence of my Master Card.
It programs my brain with data, my I.Q. goes bananas,
Surely, its creditors and high interest rates will hound me all the days of my
life, and I shall dwell in the house of the asylum, forever.” 3
Is technology and the desire of having more are our new
rulers who are running our lives? They decide for us when we need to take a vacation,
and what kind of a vacation. They decide who our friends are and what kind of
car we should drive.
In summary, we all need a “vacation”. Our Shepherd is
Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Our “vacation” should be meaningful. It
should help us to relax and come closer to God.
Let us go to our picnic with
all this in mind.