Mark 6:31

THE REST BY THE WAY

‘And He said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.’

Mark 6:31

Here we see that Jesus cares for those who work for Him. How may we find true rest, and real and permanent enjoyment in our hours of recreation?

I. Rest must be earned.—Jesus had been busily engaged in preaching in the villages of Galilee, and so had His disciples. Their rest was no mere accentuation of idleness, as so many so-called holidays are in these days of self-indulgence and luxury. In these hurrying, straining days, and in this unresting city, tired bodies and aching heads must have repose. Alas for those who never get it! But be sure of this—that the man who does not work cannot rest. True rest looks back on times of toil and of effort earnest and sustained.

II. Rest should give power for further service.—The withdrawal was only that they might ‘rest a while,’ and so be ready for work again. It is so with every man who works for God, whether it be in strictly religious effort or in the ordinary round of common duty. There are always fresh doors ahead to enter, fresh fields to win; and Christ calls us across the lake on to the mountain-top to rest with Him, but only that we may go back to the western shore, and down to the dusty plain, there to engage in bolder enterprise of effort and of service.

III. Rest in His presence.—The Master takes the disciples with Him. His word is ‘Come’—not ‘Go’—‘apart and rest a while’ with God in work, in times of pressing anxiety, of course when trouble comes and death looms near; but in pleasure, away and to make merry with our friends. Is that so? Can we say of our pleasures, ‘In Thy presence is the fulness of joy, and at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore’? Let us have done, once and for all, with the thought that in our hours of pleasure at least we may forget God and get away to make merry with our friends. Let us have done with the thought that His presence will dull any pure enjoyment or sadden any honest joy. Jesus Christ is willing to be with us ‘all the days’—the holidays as well as work-days.

—Bishop T. W. Drury.

Illustrations

(1) ‘ “The Lord rested.… Thou shalt rest.” We know that attempts have been made to ignore this principle because of its positive form, but they have always failed. At the French Revolution one item of reform was to alter the law of the Sabbath, but it came to naught. A still stranger instance of a very different kind is found in the Life of John Wesley, who, with all his goodness, was not always practical in the things of common life. We read that Wesley founded a boys’ school at Kingswood, near to Bristol, and himself drew up the rules of the school. Among them was the strange rule that the boys should have no holidays, no recreation, no games. It was to be all work and no play, and that produced not only dull boys, but it produced very naughty boys; and Wesley was sent for, and, in words which have become memorable in quite a different connection, said: “We must mend this, or we must end it,” and so it was amended by games being restored. Rest is necessary, because we are men; and, moreover, as men created in the image of God, we must rest as God rested.’

(2) ‘ “How shall I spend my holiday?” Do you really ask that question? Here is a certain test of true recreation. Do our amusements refresh us for future work? Can we look forward in them with real satisfaction to that work, and feel that they are fitting us for renewed labour, or do they tend merely to dissipate our powers? Do they send us back “like giants refreshed,” with minds eager and keen to spend and be spent in the work to which God has called us; or do we creep back unwillingly to work, like the schoolboy of bygone days, because our pleasures have left us limp and fagged, the worse and not the better for our so-called recreation? That is a test which all of us can apply to ourselves, only let us do it fearlessly and honestly.’