Mark 6

No Time To Waste

They had no leisure so much as to eat. Mark 6:31.

What do you call a busy day? Is it a day filled with some hard work at your lessons, some good fun at your games, and some kind deeds for others? These, well mixed, make the best kind of busy day for young folk.

If you ask father what he calls a busy day, he will probably laugh and say, “All days are busy days with me, young man.” And mother? She too will smile, and perhaps sigh at the same time, and her reply will be, “I wish I saw one that wasn't busy.”

Do you know what Christ called a busy day? The text tells us. It was a day when there were so many people coming and going and demanding help or healing that neither He nor His disciples had a moment to eat a meal. As Mark puts it, “they had no leisure so much as to eat.”

Now, I don't think you have lived many, if any, days like that. But your father often knows what it is to snatch a hurried meal down town instead of coming home to dinner. And your mother could tell you of days during spring-cleaning time when she was so rushed that she took an odd sort of picnic lunch in the middle of the day, and then felt desperately tired and headachy at night.

Why were Jesus and His disciples so busy? Well, the disciples had just returned from a very successful missionary journey during which they had healed many and taught many. They had spread the fame of their great Master through the countryside, and people were flocking in crowds to see the wonderful Healer and to ask His aid. It was just before the feast of the Passover too, when thousands were going up to Jerusalem; and these also, in passing, wanted to see or hear the famous new Teacher. If you can imagine a crowd gathered to hear a celebrated preacher, and another crowd waiting to get attention from a well-known doctor; if you can imagine those two crowds mixed together and multiplied by ten, you will have some idea of the number of people who were seeking help from Christ.

I hope none of you will ever have to put as much into twelve hours as had Christ and His followers that day. But I still more earnestly hope that none of you will put as little into the round of the clock as did the man who spent day after day for years trying to make an egg stand on its end. That was time stupidly wasted, and time is much too precious and sacred to waste. Jesus thought so. He said once, “The night cometh, when no man can work.” He knew how short was to be His time on earth, and He felt He must fill every fleeting moment of it.

How do you spend your time? Do you make the most of every moment? Do you work hard when you are working, and play hard when you are playing, and really rest when you are resting? Do you divide out your time so that there is enough for everything you want to do? Or are you always borrowing a few minutes from one hour to make up the time you have lost in another? Are you ever like the boy who excused himself for not learning a lesson by saying, “I had no time”? “Time!” cried his master. “You had all the time there was!” Yes, we have all the time there is; and it is usually our own fault if we lose any.

Christ spent His time on earth doing the works of God, His Father. He said Himself, “I must work the works of him that sent me.” Don't you think it would be a good thing if we could imitate Him in this? Don't you think it would be well for us if we could so work and play and rest that we could take as our motto the words that are on the clock at the Salvation Army Headquarters in London “Every hour for Jesus”? It would be fine wouldn't it? if at the end of our lives we could say, “I spent every hour for Jesus.” Does that sound impossible? It may: but it isn't. If we never do or say what we should be ashamed that Jesus should find us doing or saying, if we honestly try to do right whatever happens, if we are busy and cheerful and happy, and try always to think of others before ourselves, we are spending our time as Jesus would have us spend it. We are spending every hour for Him.