A Little Alone Time?

Scripture      Mark 6:30-32, 53-56  NRSV    

6:30 The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. 

6:53 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. 54 When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him,  55 and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was.  56 And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

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A few weeks back, Virgie posted a plaintive cry on Facebook.   “I just want a little alone time.  Is that too much to ask?”  . . .  When I say “Virgie”, do you all know who that is?   Virgie is the church custodian.  For decades she also cleaned for her ladies - ladies like Mrs. Staley, mother of Jennifer and Marsha.  And later on for them as well, and for other ladies with whom she has had a very long and caring relationship.  She comes to my house and does the floors and bathrooms once a month, plus whatever extra stuff she does just because, even though she isn’t asked to.  But she does a lot more than just clean buildings.  While she is here, she prays in every room, for the people who have used that room during the week.  Even though she attends a different congregation, she loves this church and does her best to make sure it is in perfect condition.  She was here before 6 this morning to make sure we were ready for worship after yesterday’s memorial service and concert.  When she is at my house, and when she went to her ladies’ houses, she prays for the people who live in that house, and who come to visit, and their families.  And she is a wife and mother and grandmother, with a house full of people and cats.  She has had significant medical issues, especially with her vision, and has recently had to give up cleaning for most of her ladies - although she still prays for them.   She spends all her time caring for others.  Her days are filled and over filled.  So when Virgie says, “I just want a little alone time.  Is that too much to ask?” the answer is No!  No, it isn’t.  Or rather, it shouldn’t be.  But in our busy world, it sure seems that way sometimes.

Apparently, Jesus and friends had the same problem.   You may have noticed that there is a large section of Scripture that was skipped in today’s reading.  In that section between verses 32 and 53 which Alan read, we have that event known as the feeding of the 5,000.  After the people were fed and had gone home,  Jesus sent the disciples out in a boat and he finally got a bit of alone time - which one assumes he spent in prayer and meditation -  before he walked across the sea to where the disciples were busy freaking out in the storm.  And when they got out of the boat on the shore at Gennesaret they were mobbed, as usual.   

We’ve looked at Sabbath before, about how God commanded us to take one day every week to worship and strengthen our relationship with God.  What we are talking about here, however, isn’t so much Sabbath as simply taking time out of the craziness of life to pray, to rest a little, to those things that help us get centered.  We can see from this passage that Jesus just took a little time.  It’s not like he left his disciples hanging around on the boat for 24 hours or a couple of days.  He just needed some time to regroup.  I mean, he must have been exhausted.  He had been so very busy, and then there was the whole rejection in Nazareth thing, and sending his disciples out to do what he couldn’t do in his home town.   As I am sure you all know, emotional ups and downs are really exhausting.  Using the power he received from God to heal and cast out demons and raise the dead and feed 5,000 people had to have taken a lot out of him.  I mean, we all have have battery chargers for our phones and so on.  Because the power to run all our devices comes from electricity, and if we don’t recharge them now and then they won’t be able to do what they are designed to do.  The power that Jesus drew on to do all the wondrous things he did came from God, and every now and then he had to go and re-charge.  He had to go and get a little alone time.   And he made sure his followers, his friends, also got some time away from the crowds, by sending them out on the boat to wait for him.   Because even though they weren’t doing nearly as much as he was, they were still in the middle all the chaos and excitement that surrounded him.   

Our world is filled with chaos and excitement.  Even if we stay off Facebook to avoid some of the insanity.  Even if we don’t watch the TV news.  Unless you have been living under a rock, you know that there is much conflict, much anger and disagreement in our city, in our state, our nation, around the world.  Those who have been called to help others often find themselves drawn in to arguments that they would much prefer to avoid, because in so many cases there is no winning.  The two sides in whatever the argument might be often remind me of a story my mother used to tell about me and my sister when we were very small.  She heard noise coming from our room when we were supposed to be napping and walked in to discover us standing up in our cribs, one yelling “Yes!” and the other yelling “No!”   Clearly, no one was going to win that argument.   

That’s what the world feels like a lot of days.  And then on top of all that, there is the daily pressure and stress of job, school, family, medical stuff, even church and volunteer activities  - all of the things that make your life full and over full.  

Believe me, I know your stress.   I understand the demands of family, and school, and work, and things you signed up for not realizing how much effort it was actually going to take.  (The time I said I would make gingerbread men for my step-son’s 5th grade class Christmas party comes to mind.)  And conflicts to be managed, and unexpected expenses, and emotional upheavals - all of those things that build up until we cry out, like Virgie, “I just want a little alone time!”  We all get to that place now and again.  Even Jesus got to that place.  

And then Jesus said to his followers, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”   For …they had no leisure even to eat.  

There was a commercial years ago for a bath oil with the image of a beautiful bathtub filled with suds, and a woman’s voice saying, “Calgon, take me away.”  And for lots of people, a nice warm bath will do it.  But if you are the mother of young children (or any person living with house cats), even the bathroom is not sacred.  So how do we do that?  How do we get away to a deserted place all by ourselves to rest for a while?   For each, the answer will be different.   Virgie likes to get up at 4 am for some alone time before the rest of her household starts waking.  You might like to go for a ride on your bike or walk in nature or curl up somewhere with a book or play music.   It might be deliberate and focused prayer and meditation, but it might simply be being alone, away from others, with your electronic devices turned off for an hour or more or less.  It might even be time spent at the gym (although I totally don’t get that).  Whatever it takes for you to re-group and re-charge.   If you and I can manage that every day for at least a little while, we are less likely to get overloaded with stress.   We are less likely to get separated from God.  Because if you take that time to be alone, if you take the time to find your quiet center, prayer will happen.  Conversation with God will happen.   Peace will come, even if just for a moment.

My sisters and brothers, we come to this place every week to be renewed and re-energized and restored.  But we can also find restoration out there, in our daily lives, during the week, if we take some time to be by ourselves and rest a while, even if just a few moments out of our very busy days.  When we go from this place, let us make that effort to rest, to take a moment to find a place of silence within our hearts, and in that moment, allow God to re-fill and re-charge us so that we may continue doing what God wills for us to do.