Come With Me

³⁰ The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. ³¹ Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Mark 6:30,31 NIV

Many years ago, I remember a coworker, someone who would happily describe himself as a New Ager, declaring to me that, as humanity is evolving, we have now evolved well beyond the point where we would need something as primitive as Christianity. So, I challenged him to tell me just how, and in what way,  we had evolved beyond war, bigotry, envy, greed, selfishness, tribalism or any other of the age old ‘flaws’ that the  Bible would call sin. In what way, have we outgrown Jesus’s warnings about the lure of wealth and pleasure.  If anything, the human race appears to be regressing.

The truth is: there are some teachings in the Scriptures, such as those by Jesus on the power of Mammon ( the false idol of wealth ( Matt 6 ) ) that are even more poignant today than they were in the age when they were first uttered.  Another such teaching would be  Jesus’s call to come and rest. We could call it the motif of Sabbath.  Consider it.

While other generations may have worked as hard or harder, has a generation ever been more ‘busy’ than ours?  Never more options.. more demands… more temptations.  Never has a generation been more subject to the invasion of “inner space” by images, voices and other impulses. Never has there been a more compelling and bewildering variety of “stuff” to do. Never before has a force like modern media been unleashed upon our collective consciousness. And its power and prevalence is only increasing.

I was reflecting on this theme, and my own sleep and rest deprivation, when this morning the preacher opened this very scripture – Mark 6:30-31- as the text of his message. Although what he said was powerful, for my purposes he didn’t need to say anything more. The words jumped off the page and wrestled me to the floor.

“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest…”

I think of the words of Dr. Leonard Sweet.  “We have not come to preach the times. We have come to preach eternity to the times.”  How much in our time of hurry, noise, stress and fatigue do we need to heed the Sabbath call of a gracious God.  “ Come away with Me…”. How much we need to recognize that without heeding this call we become hollow, empty shells. But with it … well, that changes everything. We have Him! 

I have a suggestion. Take a few moments ( if you are not too busy J), to ask yourself the hard questions. How many minutes of the 10,000+ minutes  I have each week do I give in conscious, deliberate communication with the Master.  More to the point, how many of those minutes do I give to the work of resting in His presence?  For real. With nobody to impress but myself… how many?  In the midst of everything else that competes for our time, energy and attention – you and I at least need to ask and answer the question. And if we have the courage to do so, truthfully, then may God grant us the grace to heed and obey His gracious call.