But the news about Him was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.
~Luke 5:15-16
Jesus become more and more famous, or infamous, and it got to the point where He couldn't go anywhere without being recognized, followed and asked for help. The demands on His time and energy steady increased from the start of His ministry right up until the last few days. But as the world demanded more and more of him and from Him, Jesus continued to go off alone to pray. Not once in the Bible does it say anything remotely like, "And Jesus wanted to go into the wilderness to pray, but He was too busy and there were far too many people who needed His help for Him to take time for His father." Nope. Never. It didn't happen. Jesus is God, but He was also a man. His strength, as a man, came from His relationship with the Father and the time the two spent together.
Like Jesus, our strength comes from our relationship with our Heavenly Father and the time we spend with Him. As life gets more chaotic and hectic and time seems to always run in short supply, the natural tendency is to push aside or delay the spiritual things to make more time for the immediate and pressing concerns of the material world. But that is backwards. The more crazy life gets, and the more pressed for time we are, the more we need to keep our mind on things above, on the eternal, on what really matters...our contact with and relationship with God. That is what really matters, and it is the only thing that will provide us with the grace, wisdom and strength to make it through our crazy day well.
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