From Exhaustion to Prayer

“After saying goodbye to them, Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray.” Mark 6:46 (Common English Bible)

Of all the things Jesus taught about prayer, the most powerful lessons were observed from his practice of prayer. Here is a moment when Jesus and his disciples are exhausted. It has been a day of incessant toil. Jesus acknowledges the disciples’ exhaustion; Jesus acknowledges his own exhaustion. In the thirty-first verse of Mark’s sixth chapter, Jesus says to the disciples, “Come by yourselves to a secluded place and rest for a while.” Jesus and his disciples depart in a boat to a deserted place. Their rest would be brief. Many people saw them leaving in the boat and ran ahead, presumably to the other side of the lake, arriving before Jesus and the disciples. Jesus shows compassion to the people and begins to teach them. Late in the day, the disciples urge Jesus to practice self-care: “Send them away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy something to eat for themselves.” (Verse 6:36) Jesus has another idea.

Jesus asks his disciples to feed the people. The toil of the day continues. Naturally, the disciples grumble. And who can blame them? They are exhausted. And feeding all the people? The disciples speak to the implausibility of that idea; a meal for everyone would cost eight months’ pay! We remember the story. Jesus takes a few loaves and fish and feeds approximately five thousand. And then there is the clean-up that follows the meal—twelve baskets of leftovers! There is exhaustion upon exhaustion. Each of us has had such days; days that seem to resist coming to an end.

Finally, Jesus calls it a day. Jesus made his disciples get into a boat and go toward Bethsaida. But Jesus doesn’t travel with the disciples. Rather, Jesus dismisses the crowd, stomachs full from a meal miraculously served to them, and Jesus goes up onto a mountain to pray. After that day, one might well assume Jesus’ spirit was depleted. Sleep might be in order. But within Jesus’ heart was another desire, to spend the night in conversation with his Father. Jesus prayed all through the night. Notice, prayer was the habitual practice of Jesus’ daily life—the communing with the one whom Jesus loved, the one who provided Jesus with all the strength, encouragement, and direction Jesus needed.

Exhaustion is one of the things that thwarts and stifles our practice of prayer. But exhaustion had no power at all with Christ. Nor was Jesus at the mercy of an irritable mood or sorrow. Jesus loved God his Father so deeply and passionately that any consideration of not praying was absent from his life. Every day and night brought an opportunity to speak to God, to acknowledge the presence of God; to simply be with God. This is an indictment upon our own failure to pray. Jesus’ practice of prayer is never meant to create guilt in our own failure to pray. Jesus never uses guilt. That isn’t God’s way with those God loves. Love and guilt are incompatible. What Jesus’ practice simply demonstrates is that there is a deficiency in our affection for God. That is where we begin. Not with a stronger resolve to pray or the exercise of greater discipline. We begin by paying sufficient attention to God that our affection for God grows. And as with any relationship, as affection grows, so does our desire to simply be with the other grows. That is when we notice our own movement from exhaustion to prayer.

Joy,