In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
“What if you try to befriend someone who doesn’t want to be your friend? Where did Jesus go to relax? I remember my baptism. My parents had me baptized when I was three months old.”
I just returned from teaching at the first session of our Diocesan St. Vartan Camp program located at the beautiful Ararat Center in upstate New York, which is a perfect location with its open and flowing fields surrounded by the Catskill Mountain of New York. During the three days I was at camp, I had many opportunities to teach and preach and interact with the children and teens of our diocese.
Each morning, the program would include a twenty-minute morning worship service. On two of the mornings, I had the opportunity to offer a short spiritual message. These services took place early in the morning. Each morning, by looking at the young faces and their expressive eyes, I could tell who slept well the night before and who stayed up talking well into the night.
So I would wonder from time to time whether the message actually sunk in or did it fall victim to tired ears? What surprised me each day was that, while shooting a basketball with them or in one of the classrooms or while eating in the cafeteria, I heard a young camper repeat something—a phrase, a sentence or even just a thought that I said during our morning worship message.
That type of thing happened a few times and each time, I found myself amazed. How did he or she remember that? They looked like they were half-asleep when I said it—I would think to myself. From there, their questions would begin flowing. Questions like “What if you befriend someone who doesn’t want to be your friend? Where did Jesus go to relax? I remember my baptism. My parents had me baptized when I was three months old.”
I loved these questions, but I think I love the opportunities to share thoughts and answers with these young minds even more so. I particularly liked the question “Where did Jesus go to relax?” So in answering them, I would think back on the many pilgrimages I have taken to Jerusalem and would tell them stories of times when Jesus and His disciples went away from the crowds and rested and spent time in private prayer. This we will see next Sunday when we talk about the Feast of the Transfiguration, when Jesus took His disciples to a mountain and on the top of that mountain, they rested and they prayed. The same was true after He fed the crowd of 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. The same was true after His own baptism when He entered into the wilderness for forty days.
For many of us, what the Bible taught us to do to keep ourselves refreshed and connected to God, has eroded over time. For too many of us, gone are the days of summer vacations, restful weeks and family time. Life no longer slows down during the summer for far too many people. That’s a sad reality because life moves by us all too quickly. We live in a very fast-paced world. There always seems to be too much to do and too little time to do it and even less time to rest. Yet, God showed us that rest is not only appropriate, it is also right and “rest” in the Biblical sense means to set aside a period of time for holy use, a time with God, a time with family and time for ourselves.
So on this summer Sunday, ask yourself:
• Do I place as much are in scheduling my rest as I do in scheduling my work?
• We work to take care of our families, but do we also rest to take care of our families?
Think about it. How is your summer going? Have you found time to rest and time for family and time to spend with God? Something for all of us to think about.
Amen.
