Time To Get Away

When Jesus told his disciples to come away with him to escape the demanding crowds, he wasn’t looking for just a time to regroup and then return to the chaos. (Mark 6:30-32) He was emphasizing the need to get some rest, to be distracted from the needs of the world and focus upon the emotional, relational, physical, and spiritual needs every human being has. Their mission work had depleted them of the energy they needed to continue in Kingdom work.

Those disciples needed rest. They hadn’t done hard farm work or spent 72 straight hours pulling nets filled with fish. They had just returned from preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and casting out demons. (Mark 6:12-13) The work of the Kingdom of God is greater than human strength alone can support. Even with the help of the Holy Spirit, exhaustion can be the result of faithful service. Such was the case for the disciples. Jesus told them, “Come away… and rest a while.”

We do ourselves a great disservice when we do not do the same. Physically we need sleep. Our bodies need to turn off and let cells cleanse themselves. Our brains need to have time to recalculate everything they absorbed during the waking hours, holding some details in easy access and sending others into the deeper subconscious. Minds can refocus on priorities and options allowing for clearer thinking and well thought out resolutions. Our emotions need times when peace is dominant and hormones can reestablish equilibrium.

At times of such peace and rest God may well have the best chance to break into our private world, get our attention, and share something with us we had been too busy to hear. Jesus told his disciples to come away with him after a prolonged period of work. They needed a change of pace, a change of scenery, a chance to think without pressure, and a chance to recharge their batteries. To ignore the need was to lessen their ability to serve their Master.

We don’t have to use our imaginations much to see what happens when we don’t take time to get away. On the mild end of the spectrum we fall asleep at work or worse yet while driving. We get grumpy and carry a short fuse on our tempers. Our response time shortens and we become more prone to accidents. As our situation moves toward the extreme, our immune system weakens and we become more susceptible to illness.

I doubt very much if it is unique to ministers, but in our vocation we call one result of a lack of rest, “burnout”. Enthusiasm is gone. Creativity is gone. Energy is gone. Any desire to participate is gone. The individual is left an emotional shell. Too many emotional battles and too many broken dreams leave the worker with no desire to work. This goes far beyond a mood or passing state. This person simply has nothing to give and there is nothing left in the inner reservoir.

Jesus told his disciples to come away and rest a while. He knew their human strength was limited. He knew there was a lot of road ahead still to be traveled. As the old saying goes, if they did not come apart, they were bound to fall apart.

We need to get away on a regular basis. The easiest way is to get adequate sleep. Even Shakespeare wrote that into his plays, “Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care.” (Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2) Another way is to schedule down times on a regular basis when personal interests take precedence over business.

On a periodic basis get a change in scenery if only for a few hours. A one or two night stay somewhere does not have to be at a five star hotel. More important than the amount of time is how the time will be spent. The world of stress and work must be left behind. There is no rest when the load is taken along. God has to be given a chance to restore and replenish.

To the Least of These

Our state has just finished another area-wide Operation Inasmuch project (operationinasmuch.org), a ministry which involves random acts of kindness by people throughout their community. It is based upon Matthew 25:40 from the Bible in which Jesus tells his followers their good deeds are not done in vain. “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it to me.”

Who are the “least of these”? It is easy for us to list those who have lost jobs and their homes and other possessions. We can point to the people who stand in lines for food when paychecks run out before the month does. We hear of but rarely see the individuals and families who must stay in homeless shelters each evening.

May I list a few other groups who may be counted among those who bear the image of Christ and are often overlooked by we who seem to be more blessed?

Economics of course come to mind first. Those in some ways have been mentioned above. There are others who must choose between food and medication or a visit to the doctor. We’d like to think that everyone who wanted to go to college could, but sometimes finances do stand in the way of a higher education. It may not be because the grants are not available, but rather because the breadwinner for the family cannot afford to quit the job that is paying the monthly bills.

What about the lonely who live in our midst? Jesus had time for those who were ostracized by society. Sometimes their lifestyle led to their rejection by their community. At other times they were isolated away through no fault of their own. Jesus took time for all these whom society no longer considers worthy of its time.

In the days of Jesus, the general grouping was labeled Gentiles, anyone who was not a Jew. Among these one particular group was avoided most by the Jews, the Samaritans. These people who lived between Judea and Galilee were considered half-breeds, half Jewish and half Gentile, bloodlines that had become mixed during the Jewish exiles of earlier centuries. Jesus chose to use this excluded people as an example many times of the breadth of God’s love. He healed Samaritans (Luke 17:11-19), he talked with Samaritans (John 4), and he used them in his parables (Luke 10).

Today we condemn this racial disparagement, but in more subtle fashion we carry a prejudice against national heritage. We let politics and situations arising in previous generations affect the way we relate to others having a different national origin than ourselves. We are called to look beyond these manmade divisions and see them as among “the least of these”.

In the region where I was raised another category existed in which Jesus would have placed those we overlook. Simply said, it is family heritage. We judge someone as being worthy of our attention based upon the reputation their family name carries. No one from that family ever graduated from high school. Every generation is on welfare. None of them ever kept a job longer than three months. You can’t trust them with anything.

“If you did it to the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me.” We can define a score of categories in which to place people we feel do not deserve our attention, our support, or our gifts of service. Yet Jesus healed the leper (Matthew 8:1-4), talked with the Samaritan (John 4), helped the Roman (Matthew 8:5-13), and called fishermen to be the bearers of the greatest news in the history of the world (Matthew 4:18-22). In Matthew 25:31-46, he includes just about all of us at one point or another.

Operation Inasmuch is all about random acts of kindness done for people regardless of their background or current context. It is far more than a day set aside for organized projects. It must become a mindset revealed throughout the year. Jesus deserves our help every day.

The Slave Next Door

The brief book of James near the end of the New Testament packs more into its five chapters about the difficulty in living a Christian life than any other part of the New Testament except maybe the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7. The author points his finger in your face and demands your walk match your talk. It’s hard to read James and not feel guilty.

The last two verses of the first chapter are a good example. “If anyone thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (RSV) In reading this I had to ask myself, “Would I recognize a widow or orphan if I passed one on the street?” The answer of course is no. They don’t normally wear signs on their chest or have a special mark on their foreheads.

The same is true of people who are victims of human trafficking. They don’t wear big name tags identifying themselves as slaves in a free society. Yet they are all around us: sex slaves and labor slaves. They work in the agricultural fields, in our restaurants, as hotel workers, as house servants, as prostitutes, and in the pornography industry. We can point to the horrid conditions oversees, but these are slaves working here in America, in our state, in our community, next door.

No, they don’t wear signs or walk around shouting, “Unclean! Human slave!” They are just as real, however, as the widow, the orphan, and the illegal immigrant in our midst. Often they are the same person.

My home state of North Carolina is one of the largest offenders in our country. Read these statistics from Triad Ladder of Hope (triadladderofhope.org):

What Is Human Trafficking?

Human trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, obtaining, and transporting of persons by use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjecting them to forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation. If the victim is less than 18 years of age, no force, fraud or coercion is required to prove trafficking.

• There are at least 30 million slaves worldwide, more than any other time in history. 80% of these victims are exploited for sex.
• Human trafficking is a multi-billion dollar industry. The second largest crime in the U.S.A.
• Over 50% of child pornography web sites originate from the U.S.A.
• U.S. citizens account for 25% of sex tourists worldwide and 80% in Latin America.
• A victim of trafficking may look like many of the people that you see every day.
• Over 200,000 youth are victims of commercial sexual exploitation within the United States.
• There is a trafficking victim brought into the United States every 10 minutes.
• Human Trafficking is rapidly on the rise in North Carolina due to military presence, Interstate 95 & 85, coastal ports, agricultural industry and a large immigrant population.

James says to remember the widow and orphan. The Old Testament is filled with reminders we serve a God who cares for the helpless in society. (Exodus 22:21-24; Deuteronomy 24:14-22; Jeremiah 22:3; Zechariah 7:8-10) Jesus tells us the second great commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matthew 22:34-40; Luke 10:25-37)

The old song says the world will know we are Christians by our love. You will know the human slave by the fear in their eyes, the helplessness in their posture, the silence as someone else speaks for them, the loss of personal identity, and their lack of freely chosen friends. These need to see Christian love in action.

What can you do? Pray for someone to intercede for these victims. Become educated about human slavery in your area. Discover your slavery footprint (slaveryfootprint.org) by becoming aware of how your lifestyle is supporting human slavery elsewhere. Finally, don’t be afraid to help when you become aware of human slavery in your community. You may be the answer to your own prayers.

Wake Up Jesus!

 The disciples were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. The majority may well have been fishermen by profession. They were used to being out on the water. They had experienced the quickly appearing storms in the area. They knew what had to be done. Jesus was asleep in the boat. Wake him up! (Luke 8:22-25)

We are given no details as to the efforts of the disciples to save the boat before they woke up Jesus. They had tried what they knew and they were still sinking. Who knows what they expected Jesus to do? Maybe he was to add his own two arms to the bailing process or help hold the rigging tight against the wind. Whatever their expectations were, they wanted Jesus awake and aware of their circumstances.

“I can do it” constitutes one of the first full sentences learned by toddlers it seems. Deep within our spirits there is the drive to be independent. We can do it ourselves. We can handle this without any outside help. It’s the old “by your own bootstraps” philosophy of self-reliance. Then we meet the storm that is bigger than we are.

The storm may be financial in nature. It may be a family relationship crisis. Disease or illness may strike with complete surprise. We are left struggling to find the resources to deal with it. Finances. Wisdom. Physical strength. When all we have is not enough, what is our next recourse?

This drive to be independent and self-reliant tells us not to wake up Jesus. We are sure there is a solution that will not require us to admit we don’t have the resources to meet the challenge. We will still be able to say we handled it ourselves. We did it our way. We don’t need God. We don’t have to wake up Jesus.

Experienced though they were, the disciples knew they had met their match in that gale on the Sea of Galilee. They may have been experienced, but the wisdom gained in earlier situations served to alert them to the truth they were confronting something beyond their control.

We will never know what those disciples expected Jesus to do when they awakened him in the midst of the storm. All we get to read is their cry for help and understanding, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?” (Mark 4:38) The gospel writer Mark’s record emphasized simply the disciples wanted company in their misery, “Master, don’t you care?”

How many times have we seen people suffer and perhaps even sink beneath the load because they would not seek or accept help? Becoming independent is a part of growing up. We need to learn what we can and should be doing on our own. There are matters in life which are our responsibility to handle and complete. There are issues which we must decide on our own.

We are also called to use wisdom to recognize when we are up against something we cannot handle alone. We were never intended to be independent and solo creatures. We need cooperation. We need community. We need each other. Ultimately we need to recognize we need God.

Too often we still revert back to our demand for independence. We point to natural causes as major influences in our lives and develop ways of dealing with them. We point to human influences in our daily existence and learn methods of making the best out of those relationships. There are even times when we are forced to say we don’t know what is going on, and then we try to rationalize something to satisfy our natural demand for an answer. We’ll do anything to keep from waking up Jesus.

We cannot ignore him. He is there, maybe seemingly asleep, but he is there, and he knows everything is under control. If we need him, if our perception of life’s situations leaves us trembling with fear, he is there. In the midst of the storm all we have to do is wake up Jesus. He has it all under control. He brings peace to the storm, especially the one in our souls.

Those Special Days

Yesterday was a special day for multiple reasons in my family. Unfortunately I cannot be with any of those members due to distance. April 30 marked my older son’s 34^th birthday. My parents would have been married 70 years yesterday. They missed celebrating it together by five weeks. Only recently did I learn my parents were married on the same date as my paternal grandparents. This year would have marked their 113^th wedding anniversary. April 30 has been a special day for a long time.

In 311 Emperor Galerius legally recognized Christianity in the Roman Empire. Christopher Columbus received the royal commission to make preparations for his western voyage in 1492. George Washington gave his first inaugural address on this date in 1789. The Louisiana Purchase was finalized in 1803 and Louisiana became a state nine years later. Willie Nelson was born in 1933. The first Land Rover debuted at an auto show in 1948. Most important of all perhaps to our newest generations, in 1993 the world wide web was born in CERN. Thanks goes to it for these incredibly exciting notes on our history!

Not too many people are concerned about my family’s anniversaries. Perhaps only a few more are interested in George Washington’s first inaugural address or the date of the birth of the state of Louisiana. Yet all we have to do is consider all the ways we celebrate dates, and we realize remembering specific occasions is important to humanity. If no one else, then Hallmark Cards will remind us.

In Exodus 23:14-17, God reminded Israel of the importance of remembering specific dates. The first and foremost was the great event of the Exodus, the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. The other two events are tied to periods of thanksgiving for the harvest the Lord had provided for his people. Remembering to be thankful is still a wise activity.

For the Christian the New Testament speaks of three pivotal dates for the first followers of Christ and later disciples. The first the whole world celebrates with us as Christmas. God’s breaking into human history in such innocent helplessness is truly worth commemorating. (Luke 1-2) The secular realm will not allow us to ignore that date!

The second refers to Passover Week in many ways similar to the Passover Feast celebrated by the Jews. The key and significant difference lies in the freedom that is celebrated. For the Jew it was freedom from human slavery. For the Christian it is freedom from the bondage and penalty of sin. Instead of Passover as believers in Christ we mark the events of Holy Week culminating in Resurrection Sunday, Easter.

The third crucial date is known in Jewish circles as Pentecost, coming fifty days after Easter. On this date the Holy Spirit came upon that first group of early disciples and in them established the Church as the Body of Jesus Christ. (Acts 2) From that birthday of the Church all Christians trace their earliest roots as members of the Body of Christ active in the world.

Specific dates give us reference points. They place us in the flow of history and allow us to connect with others either close or far in geography, close or far in time. They mark days of transition and days of both beginnings and endings. They also serve to remind us of those who may not get the attention they need and deserve. Mother’s Day is easy. Father’s Day almost as easy. Then there are those grandparents, administrative assistants, and military veterans.

We need to remember all these on their special days. God calls his people to remember him above all else. We use Christmas and Easter each year. Some faith groups remember Pentecost. These recall the birth of Christ and the birth of the Church. Do you remember your birth date? You get reminded regularly of your physical birth anniversary and the history it represents. Do you remember your spiritual birth anniversary? Do you have one? That is the most important date for both your physical and spiritual life. That event determines your eternal history. (John 1:12-13)