Reflections based on Mark 1:29–39; Luke 5:12–16.

‘crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their illnesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.’ (Luke 5:15–16)

I love being busy and so often fill my days to the full. However, over recent years God has been talking to me about being overly tired. I think it can be a challenge, particularly when we can see so much need around us, to choose not to get involved with those things we discern God hasn’t asked us to.

But those urgent needs can be pressing, much as the crowds Jesus faced were. We need to learn from Jesus – even though He was faced with huge needs every day, He still took time out to rest and be alone with His Father in order to be refreshed, renewed and refocused. If we do not do that for ourselves, and instead continually respond to every ‘urgent’ need, we will eventually ‘burn out’. I have certainly experienced this.

It feels all the more poignant to be writing about this today, as it would have been my mum’s 75th birthday. Before she died (just over a month ago) she wrote to each one of us. I had helped her write those letters a couple of years ago, when she seemed close to death. But she had hand-written something extra in mine, something that we had actually spoken about the last time we had visited as a family. She told me she was worried about how I always seemed so tired, and always so busy. She urged me to slow down, to pare back. I was able to express to her that God had been saying the same thing to me, and that I’d actually been learning about the need for better balance for a few years. I’ve started on that journey…but I know I still have lots to learn.

Jesus was clearly able to step back from the urgent demands and in so doing discerned clearly His priorities, which in this case meant moving on to somewhere new, leaving needy people behind. We might find that really difficult to do, so what can we learn from Him?

It seems that Jesus learned the difference between the urgent and the important. One extreme example from his life was when he purposefully delayed going to see His dying friend Lazarus (after receiving an urgent plea from his sisters) to do what was God’s will – raise Lazarus from the dead (John 11).

While we may never have such a dramatic choice to make, we still need God’s wisdom to help us prioritise our time. Too often we take up many hours of our days spending ourselves on what may seem urgent, but they are, in fact, not the most important tasks God has for us.

Reflection: Carve out some time with God today to evaluate what is most important in your life and honestly assess the proportion of time you are devoting to those things. Ask Him to show you any ‘urgent’ demands that are not actually yours to meet. Then ask Him what changes you may need to make to your daily routines.