Thought for the Day

As delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning, trying to link several storylines from the show which are in the long paragraph towards the end:

Jesus was out of the house early to pray. Gone before the sun was up. His companions came searching. 'Everyone is looking for you' they said.

They were. There were probably queues in his village of sick people needing healing.

How did Jesus respond?

'Sorry fellers, I needed some head space?'

'Gosh where does the time go?'

'OK, let's go to work.'

None of the above.

I was chatting to someone yesterday who tends to get too busy. I'll call him John. John works and plays hard. John is more concerned with whether a challenge is interesting than whether he has time to do it.

By the end of the conversation John was already asking if there were other bits of ministry with which I needed help. I avoided the temptation to say 'All of them'.

Whether raising money for somebody else's cancer cure, spending a night sleeping in a crane or even collecting cuff-links the common link is time. It takes time to do these things. No-one ever got good at anything without giving over a chunk of time to it. Specialists are busy. The generous-hearted are busy. I would wager those who holiday on a crane next to a lively harbour-side are probably busy too. And our dam-buster war-heroes had to drop every previous priority and make their new expertise - the enemy.

So what did Jesus say? He said the remarkable, and shocking, 'Let's go somewhere else'. In Mark's Gospel, where we find this story, he prioritises preaching over healing saying, 'That is why I have come'.

Sporting expertise or built up collections have an opportunity cost. What wasn't done in order to do the thing that was.

Now. What are you here for?