Happy hour

Mark 3:7-12

          Ahhh, a hard week at work. Let's get together with some friends tomorrow and celebrate Friday at the local pub with a few brews and good company. That's not quite what Jesus is saying but it's somewhat close. Jesus told his disciples to have a boat ready to get away from the crowds. 

          Jesus welcomed all, healed all. He consorted with the outcasts, the unclean and changed their lives as He changes the life of anyone who comes to him. Even so, Jesus needs to escape. We all need to escape. I think that's the idea behind happy hour. What we really need is something a bit more substantial.

          Even though we are to be part of the world, we are not of the world, we need to remove ourselves from the world to recharge, put things into perspective, give time to converse with our God with no other interruptions. This removal of ourselves can happen in various degrees but it is crucial that it happen. Quiet time, down time, seclusion, whatever it is. It is as necessary to our soul as food is to our bodies. We need to recharge our personal batteries and focus on what is important. Part of that for me is getting up at a seemingly ungodly hour and meditating as well as writing this blog. To someone else it might be a bubble bath, still to others sitting at the beach, or just quiet time away from it all, perhaps a long drive. I like all the above actually. Throw in a few days of silent prayer and that would be perfect.

         We all need to recharge. Enter the silence, feel his peace.

7 Jesus departed with his disciples to the lake, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; ⁸hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, beyond the Jordan, and the region around Tyre and Sidon. ⁹He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him; ¹⁰for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. ¹¹Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ ¹²But he sternly ordered them not to make him known.