Never Too Busy

 

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK

NEVER TOO BUSY

Mark 3:20-21

20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, "He is out of his mind."

NIV

We are going to get to page two a little later regarding Jesus’s mother and brothers coming and wanting to speak with him, as well as the accusation from the Pharisees and the responses of Jesus to both. But for now, let us deal with page one and the concept of Jesus being so busy with meeting the needs of the crowd that he did not have time to take care of his own need to eat. When we look at Jesus, that is the norm for Him. He always is available to meet others' needs ahead of his own. The greatest example of this is his prayer in the garden when he asked the Father if there was any other way, if this cup could be lifted from him, nevertheless, He said to the Father, “Your will be done, not mine”. Here, he put the needs of the people ahead of his own, and we would have to believe he spent much time healing all that came. From the remarks of Mark, we are to conclude that his family, that would be his mother and brothers came to take charge of him because forgoing eating just to heal people was not the normal way of life for a normal person. Our society today is all about self-care. Even we believers talk about the fact we should take care of our bodies because we are the temple of God and so we should abstain from anything that would defile our bodies. Unfortunately, we think abstaining from alcohol is all we need to do in order to not defile our bodies, yet we overeat far more then we should, we eat all the wrong foods when we do eat, and many of us like too many sweets and think nothing of it. However, this is not the point Mark is making about Jesus not eating to take care of the needs of people and why his family thought he was out of his mind. When it comes to the service of others, we should be putting their needs ahead of ours. That is a truth we find all throughout the scriptures. Sometimes, in practical terms, in the affairs of ministry, we need to put aside our need for supper, if someone needs to be healed. However, in a broader sense, this concept may be seen as the affairs of religion may so occupy the attention of ministers and others as to prevent their customary pursuits. Religion or spiritual matters are far important than the ordinary business of this life. It would seem there it is not unreasonable if our temporal affairs sometimes give way to the higher interests of our own souls and the souls of others. At least that is the thought expressed by some scholars of old in regard to this portion of scripture. We tend to again, however, in our society it is also rare that others would crowd the home or church we were in disturbing our own pursuits, seeking our attention to their needs. It would seem we all hardly ever bother each other for a need, or for that matter really bother Jesus for our need. Sure, we call in for a prayer request and get our name on the list of prayer needs, but are we really bothering Jesus, are we really crowding in to get to Jesus? He is always ready to meet our needs, we only need to go to him. He is never too busy to take care of our needs. Perhaps, we too should never be too busy.