Activity, rest, reflection

In the morning, while it was still very dark,Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. Mark 1:35

I remember a friend telling me how he spent some time in a Hindu ashram in India. After a day of blissful inactivity, he was sitting on his bed reading the Bible - his usual night-time practice. He read this first chapter of Mark’s Gospel, and the contrast struck him very forcibly - Jesus was a man both of action and of reflection. The narrative moves at breakneck pace, punctuated with the words ‘immediately’ and ‘at once’. Apparently in the space of a single day Jesus taught in the synagogue, did a major exorcism, healed Peter’s mother-in-law and then ministered to a large crowd of sick and disturbed people who had gathered outside the door of his house. That, to put it mildly, is activity.  Just reading it through is enough to make me feel tired. 

So he needed and deserved his night’s rest - and perhaps a lie-in? Not a bit of it. ‘While it was still very dark’ he got up and slipped out to a quiet spot to pray. His friends, when they rose from their beds, wondered where he was and went looking for him - after all, there were more crowds seeking his attention. However, Jesus knew that he would not be able either to minister to those crowds, or maintain his own spiritual equilibrium, without this time of silence, reflection and prayer.

 Activity, rest, reflection: there was the Saviour’s cycle of life, a cycle which is captured (at their best) in our Lenten disciplines. We live in an endlessly busy, noisy, pressurised world, in which work tends to dominate, occasionally giving way to highly active ‘leisure’. The pattern of Jesus has a feeling of wholeness about it, one which could profitably help to shape the way we keep Lent. Not idleness, not sloth, not striving, but a balanced life of activity, rest and reflection.

 Canon David Winter is a former Diocesan Director of Evangelism,a broadcaster and author of many books including Hope in the Wilderness (BRF).