The Lord will never be too busy to attend to our need

The Lord calls the disciples to go on vacation, find a place of retreat, and invites them to spend some time together resting. The Christian life has to be a balanced life, not everything is just serving, serving , serving, working, working, working, and even in the secular world as well or anything at work at home , the housewives or whatever. We must take time to rest, relax, charge the batteries and then return to the charge with new strength.

That is an unavoidable law of life and certainly also of Christian life and ministry. And we have to give each other opportunities to take those break times. Interestingly, what happens here reveals something about the person of Jesus that I want to share with you as well.

They get on a boat, they go in the direction of that place of retreat, but what happens? That multitude that knows of the Word of life that contains the ministry of Jesus, the wonderful miracles that He does, the healings that He does, the healings that He does, discover that the Lord has gone out and is going to the other side of the lake. , and they hurry then, the word gets out and they run to the other side of the lake.

And when the Lord arrives there and perhaps is preparing to go out with the disciples to that deserted place that they have agreed to visit for a time, he discovers that there is a great multitude that is waiting for him, hungry and eager, and in need of those words of life that He wants to give them. The Lord's reaction at that moment is interesting.

I imagine that in the first moment perhaps there was a reaction of a little annoyance from Him, I would have felt that way, who knows if he did not even experience that, but the truth is that at the moment all plans were spoiled by him. Lord of rest and those vacations so needed at the moment are interrupted by a great human mass that is in need of ministry from the Lord.

Christ's reaction is what interests me the most, and it is one of compassion and mercy, something that characterized Him over and over again. It says that: The Lord, seeing that great multitude that has come from the cities and gathered to Him, says that Jesus left when they call him Lord, there is a large crowd that is waiting for you, he says that Jesus left: "He saw a large crowd and had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. "

That was the Lord's reaction over and over again when the people came. We saw recently when this woman with the issue of blood approaches Him, pestering Him with her need, the Lord responds in a precious and merciful way. When the friends of the paralyzed man lower the bed through the roof and the Lord instead of rejecting them agrees to their urgent request. When the Cyrus-Phoenician woman also saw the Lord pestering the Lord with her need, the Lord again and again mercifully acceded to the people around Him, even His own disciples were not so merciful.

When Bartimaeus for example begins to shout to the Lord: Lord Son of David, have mercy on me, heal me, people say to Bartimaeus: shut up, leave the Lord alone, he is too busy. When the children approach the Lord to be blessed, the disciples distance them thinking that they are mere children and the Lord has no interest in these infantile creatures but the Lord corrects them.

In this case we will see later when the Lord identifies himself with the crowd's need for food and the disciples tell him: send them away and let them buy food elsewhere. But I always see that compassion, that mercy that moved the Lord to go beyond the moment and that tells us something about the heart of Jesus, it is a compassionate heart, it is a merciful heart, it is a heart that takes pity on our needs and our condition.

One of my favorite verses is in Psalm 103 which says: as a father has compassion on his children, the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. Over and over again the Lord invites us to approach Him with that sense of trust. We have a Father who knows that we are made of very brittle material. We are humans. That is why that same Psalm 103 says that: because He knows our condition. In English it says: for He knows our frame. He knows our frame, He knows the very structure of our being, He remembers that we are dust.

The Lord knows that we are very weak and very fragile children. And He treats us that way. And we have to see the Father always seeing us that way. When we fail the Lord, when we have wanted to serve Him and have failed, let us remember that the Lord is merciful and compassionate, He never rejects the one who approaches Him. The Lord does not reject or despise us when we manifest our humanity or our imperfection, He always us go with compassion.

The Lord will never be too busy to attend to our need. He will never tell us: oh, what you are asking of me is too insignificant. For Him there is no great or small, we can come to Him with all our needs, and we ourselves have to be people of compassion, we have to treat ourselves with that mercy. Our churches should be places of refuge, places of compassion, places of healing where people can come with any situation, whatever it is. Sometimes ugly, unpleasant, defects that life has accumulated on our character.

And the Church of Jesus Christ has to be a compassionate, merciful community that cares for the needy, that deals with people in their brokenness and imperfections with the same mercy with which Christ treated that multitude. The hallmark of God's people should be compassion and grace. That is why the apostle Paul says in a passage that: your gentleness is known to all men. And the apostle Paul also says in another passage: brothers, when any of you is caught in some fault, you who are spiritual, correct him with a spirit of meekness, looking at yourselves, not being that you also fall.

As we are aware of our own humanity, we can also treat others with great compassion, much mercy, that should be the hallmark of every believer and every community of faith, the compassion that Christ himself manifests.

Let us be people of mercy and grace. God bless you and we will continue with this series of meditations later. Your brother in Christ, Pastor Roberto Miranda, says goodbye to you.