No Leisure Even to Eat

All you football moms out there can identify with having no leisure even to eat.

You’ve carted them to practices and cheered them on in games. You’ve driven the length and width of the state of North Dakota (for example) with kids and crockpots in the trunk. Paper plates, pickle jars, and plastic forks are stowed in the vehicle as if it were a cruise ship.

And still you had no leisure to eat!

Between handing out paper plates of hotdish and cheering when your son scored a touchdown, you had no time to fill a plate for yourself, much less eat it.

Congratulations to the Devils Lake Firebirds football team, who won their first ever State Championship last weekend! Congratulations also to all of you football moms!

Now, you can sit down and enjoy a quiet meal at home.

That’s just what the disciples thought they were going to do after a busy season of ministry. They came back, full of stories of victory and success, but Jesus’s lodgings were so busy that “many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”

Jesus offered a solution: “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.”

But when they arrived at the desolate place, it was full of the very harum-scarum crowd they thought they were escaping. It was like the football stadium had emptied onto the rolling prairie. Maybe they wanted to just get back in the boat.

Jesus had a better plan. He had compassion. He taught the people until it was late. When the disciples, like moms reaching home after the glare and activity of those Friday night lights, said, “Send them away…. to buy themselves something to eat,” Jesus said the hard thing you knew was coming: “You give them something to eat.”

Remember, they’d had a busy ministry season. They’d had no downtime for filling their own stomachs. They were probably hangry. (Not casting any shade on you moms.)

The disciples didn’t think they were full enough- of money or food- to provide for the people. They forgot that the only resource they really needed was the One Who was talking with them.

They did obey His command to go find out how many loaves they had. It was a gross demonstration of how unprepared they were for this whole venture. They thought the busy season was over! They only had five loaves and two fish in the glove compartment of their Accord.

Little did they know that in giving all they had, in pouring themselves out for the 5,000 others who demanded their time and attention, they would be filled.

Jesus was teaching them something about emptiness. Feeling emotionally drained? Physically tired? Spiritually dry? Mentally vapid?

You do not need ME time. You need to trust Jesus to provide whatever it is that someone else needs through you. And as you pour it out into the lives and souls of others, He will make sure that your own hunger is completely satisfied.

“And they all ate and were satisfied.”

Even the ones who had no leisure to eat sat down at that vast banquet and were filled.