Alone time

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

ALONE TIME

Matt 14:22-24

22 Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. 23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it.

NIV

We do not want to get ahead of ourselves and go straight to Jesus’ walking on the water and the incident with Peter getting out of the boat. There is a truth we should consider first, and that is after Jesus sent his disciples on without him and dismissed the crowd, He went further up the mountainside by himself to pray. First, it is interesting that the crowd agreed to be dismissed. Usually, we see the crowd following after him whatever he goes, but somehow, they obeyed his dismissal. Jesus needed time alone to spend in conversation with His Father. We should see this is also what we need. It is good to pray together at times, as Jesus said that if two or more of us agree on anything to ask for, it will be done. However, there is a time when we need to just be alone with our Heavenly Father. In a culture that has such a social orientation, and it seems the need to always be with someone, doing something, going somewhere, it gives us little to no time to dismiss the crowd and go farther up the mountain to be alone in prayer. In some sense, although the truth is about getting alone with God, we can also see that because of the culture, we are buffeted by the waves of society being tossed around by all our responsibilities. Yet, the fact remains, we need to dismiss it all so that we can spend alone time with God.