Jesus is relentlessly busy – all those pressing needs surround him: Simon’s sick mother-in-law, other sick people, those possessed by demons and the merely curious. Yet still he finds time to pray. How can we get the balance right between availability to those who need us and our need to refresh? Reflect on this in relation to our own everyday context (as busy nurses, doctors, teachers, parents, carers, pastors – or whatever it is that consumes our time), and in terms of those who deal with larger crises and situations (e.g. medical personnel in an epidemic, emergency services dealing with a natural disaster or war-torn Syria, volunteers helping refugees and displaced persons).
- God promises strength to the prayerful and the trusting. We find evidence of God’s strength not only in the heroic lives of great humanitarians (e.g. Nelson Mandela, Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa), but also in the lives of ordinary people: parents with sick or wakeful babies, staff in hard-pressed hospitals and care facilities, police officers and volunteers looking for a missing child – and many more. Praise God not only at what is on offer through the resources of prayer, but also at what is divinely ‘built in’ to human nature!
- What does Paul mean by being ‘a slave to all’ (1 Corinthians 9.19)? It resonates with Jesus’ words: ‘Whoever wishes to be first…must be slave of all’ (Mark 10.44). In response to a sermon on the latter, someone recently said to the preacher: ‘We have done away with slavery – I will be a slave to no one!’ Paul’s explanation suggests that he was not thinking in terms of what most today would understand a slave to be. Similarly, ‘to all’ does not imply a free-for-all, no ‘red lines’, ‘no principles’ approach to his faith. But to become, in every way, as someone else for the sake of the gospel is truly to imitate Christ (Hebrews 2.17).