At the End of the Day

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed, 'everyone has been looking for you!' Jesus replied, 'Let us go somewhere else - to the nearby villages - so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.'" Mark 1:35-38

Before the sun has come up and while the world is still sleeping, Jesus is awake. Not only awake, but focused, purposeful, still. Even when people are looking for him, calling for his attention, and probably begging for his healing work or authoritative preaching, Jesus remains undistracted.

The undivided attention and single-minded focus of Christ catches my attention and impresses me greatly. I thought Jesus was all about His ministry, all about helping others, all about healing the sick and preaching the good news. But here in this passage, Jesus is focused on something even more. Even when there are people to tend to and truth to proclaim and ministering to be done, there is something else that holds Jesus' attention - something more than the fact that everyone has been looking for him.

You see, if it was me, I would be right in the middle of the crowd...not alone in the stillness of the dawn. "Oh! People are looking for me? Well, I better get down there right away! What do they need? This is an incredible opportunity to heal and preach and..."

At the end of this first week of school, I feel like four weeks have gone by. My days have been full of nursing class introductions and clinical orientations, but my list of things to do centers around everything else I am trying to accomplish at the same time - marketing a book, planning to go to Africa, applying for a visa, figuring out fundraising, preparing a presentation for a seminar, being a part of the leadership team of HUmanity while helping plan campus-wide events to raise awareness about human trafficking, and so forth and so on. And I love it. I love being a part of good things and working hard to fill my days with meaningful stuff. God is doing big things in my life right now, so I feel empowered to go hard all day every day. But there has been very little stillness.

I look into the life of Jesus and see something more. I see prayerful stillness in the quiet hours of the morning. I see crowds of people searching for the healer and teacher while He is singly focused on being in the presence of God. Even when people are looking for him, even when ministering could be done and "good things" could be accomplished, Jesus has incredible devotion to the thing that matters most - God Himself.

It is easy to get so caught up in doing good things that we forget the unsurpassable value of God Himself.

We find worth in Him, not in working for Him, for He is of infinite worth.

And so I prayed: God, thank you for bringing me to my last semester of nursing school. Thank you for publishing my book. Thank you for sending me to Africa. Thank you for giving me a leadership position in HUmanity. But those are not the source of my happiness and strength. You are. Only you are. I commit to placing you above all the "good things" I feel that I need to do for you. And if any of these "good things" get in the way of that, I give you permission to take them away.

A dangerous prayer, yes. Yet after reading about Jesus and His amazing focus on putting God first above all else (even the "good things"), I needed to come to that point of reckless abandon. I realized that, at the end of the day, if all my books are burned and no one ever buys them again, if my visa is rejected and I don't go to Africa ever and have to spend the rest of my life in Searcy, if HUmanity falls apart, and if I flunk out of my last semester in nursing school, I will be okay. In fact, I will be more than just okay. I will be perfectly satisfied in knowing and having Christ. Because nothing can take Him away.

At the end of the day, may we be satisfied in Christ alone. Because then, even if all is taken away, we can rest in the stillness of the morning in the presence of God, knowing that nothing can ever take away our greatest treasure.