“And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.”
—Mark 6:31
I needed a vacation.
Not merely somewhere to go.
Not simply a few days away from work.
I needed time away with people I love. Time outside the routines and responsibilities that had begun occupying nearly every available space in my life.
I needed rest.
I am not sure I fully understood how tired I had become.
That is one of the dangers of constant activity. Eventually, exhaustion begins to feel normal.
We learn to function while depleted.
We get up.
We go to work.
We answer the phone.
We respond to the messages.
We meet the deadlines.
We take care of the people who depend upon us.
We fulfill our responsibilities, attend church, handle problems, and prepare ourselves to do it all again tomorrow.
There are always people coming.
There are always responsibilities going.
And somewhere between the two, we can lose the ability to hear what our own soul has been trying to tell us.
Mark 6 describes a season of intense activity in the lives of the disciples.
Jesus had sent the twelve out two by two. They had preached repentance, cast out devils, anointed the sick, and witnessed people being healed.
When they returned, they gathered around Jesus and told Him everything they had done and taught.
They had not been wasting their time.
They had been ministering.
They had been serving.
They had been pouring themselves out for others.
But even good work can leave us exhausted.
The demands surrounding Jesus and His disciples had become so constant that Scripture says there were “many coming and going.” They could not find enough uninterrupted time even to eat.
Jesus saw it.
He saw the crowd.
He saw the needs.
He saw the work that remained unfinished.
But He also saw the condition of His disciples.
And He said:
“Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.”
Jesus did not question their commitment.
He did not accuse them of laziness.
He did not tell them that greater faith would eliminate their need for food, sleep, distance, or quiet.
He did not tell them to ignore their exhaustion and keep working until everyone else had been helped.
He invited them to come away.
That is important because the work was not finished.
The people had not stopped coming.
The needs had not disappeared.
There were still sick bodies, wounded hearts, hungry families, and people who needed to hear the truth.
But Jesus did not invite the disciples to rest because the work was finished.
He invited them to rest because they were not.
We sometimes treat rest as though it were a reward for completing everything.
Once the work is finished, we will rest.
Once the house is clean, we will rest.
Once the children no longer need anything, we will rest.
Once every message has been answered, every problem has been solved, every deadline has been met, and everyone else is satisfied, we will finally allow ourselves to stop.
But everything is never finished.
There will always be another need.
Another email.
Another phone call.
Another problem.
Another person waiting for something from us.
If we wait until life gives us permission to rest, we may never rest at all.
Rest is not laziness.
It is part of the order God established.
After the work of creation, God rested. Not because He was exhausted, but because the work had reached its appointed stopping place.
God commanded Israel to observe the Sabbath.
He gave the land itself seasons of rest.
David wrote of being led beside still waters and having his soul restored.
Jesus regularly withdrew from the crowds to pray.
And when the disciples became surrounded by constant demands, Jesus told them to come apart and rest awhile.
Rest is not always the absence of activity.
Sometimes rest is the absence of demand.
During my vacation, I did not spend the week doing nothing.
I traveled.
I walked.
I toured.
I photographed.
I talked.
I listened.
I wrote in my journal.
I carried my phone.
I carried my iPad.
I carried my camera.
And, of course, I carried my thoughts with me.
In some ways, my mind became more active than it had been in months.
But it was a different kind of activity.
For several days, I was no longer required to give my attention to everything that normally demands it.
The phone was not constantly ringing.
The emails were not steadily arriving.
There were no customer questions waiting to be answered.
There was no household project insisting that it needed to be completed next.
My mind was finally free to wander without being immediately summoned back by another responsibility.
And once the noise began to quiet, I started noticing things.
I noticed the people waiting at an airport gate.
I noticed the nervous energy of children preparing for a journey.
I noticed dawn breaking above the clouds.
I noticed weathered buildings and streets that had carried generations of travelers before me.
I noticed the sound of the ocean after darkness removed the distractions competing with it.
I noticed the strange providence of standing in the same place where someone I love had once stood—without knowing it until afterward.
I noticed the bittersweet truth that sometimes we must leave, not because something went wrong, but because the appointed time has come to move on.
None of those moments shouted.
They did not demand my attention.
They were simply there, waiting to be noticed.
And perhaps that is why I had missed so many similar moments before.
Life had become too loud for quiet things to speak.
Rest does not require an airline ticket.
It does not require an oceanfront balcony, a distant island, or enough money to escape every responsibility for a week.
Sometimes rest is an hour without the phone.
A quiet drive.
A walk without headphones.
A morning with an open Bible and no agenda beyond listening.
A few minutes sitting outside while the sun rises.
A deliberate decision to stop producing long enough to remember that our value was never determined by our productivity.
Sometimes we need to step away—not because we have stopped caring, but because we have been caring without stopping.
There is a reason Jesus said, “Come ye yourselves apart.”
Some separation is necessary.
We cannot hear every voice and still clearly distinguish His.
We cannot answer every demand and still pretend that our souls require nothing.
We cannot continually pour from ourselves without returning to the One who fills us.
The invitation was not to abandon the work.
It was to step away from it for a while.
To breathe.
To eat.
To pray.
To listen.
To rest.
I left for Puerto Rico believing I needed a vacation.
I returned understanding that I needed something deeper.
I needed enough distance from the noise to recognize what God had been placing in front of me.
The journey did not suddenly make God speak.
God had been speaking all along.
Rest simply created room for me to listen.
Before the journey could speak, I had to become quiet enough to hear it.
Perhaps you do not need to run away.
Perhaps you simply need to come apart.
Not forever.
Just for a while.
Long enough to breathe.
Long enough to rest.
Long enough to listen.
