Ideally, I like to take a day trip each year to the North Georgia Mountains and spend the day on a prayer hike with our dog, Butch. During the course of that day as we go up the mountain, I pray over the events of life since the last time we went on this adventure. The descent brings me back to reality as I pray over those things that I know will be upcoming. I never have an agenda when I go on these hikes. Instead, I try to allow my prayers to go to those places wherever the Spirit leads me. Sometimes my prayers lead me to focus on trying to work through a particular struggle with another person. At other times, my mountain hike leads me simply to give God thanks and praise for the ways in which He has worked in my life.
Jesus had just begun His public ministry by preaching in the synagogue in Nazareth followed by two healings when He realized that He needed some time to reset His heart and soul. Although the Bible does not tell us the exact amount of time that lapsed between Jesus’s proclamation in the synagogue and His decision to go “to a solitary place,” I am sure that our Savior knew His own spiritual needs better than many of us understand ours. Within the four Gospels, we can see that Jesus went away to pray, either by Himself or with a small number of His followers, more than twenty times during the course of His ministry.
I did not learn the need to go off to a solitary place until I was already in professional ministry. It was then that I began to feel pulled in many directions. On that first prayer hike, I realized that spending time alone in thought, reflection, and prayer was something I had ignored for too many years of my life.
The aspect of this passage, though, that has always resonated so deeply for me appears in the words, “The people were looking for Him and when they came to where He was, they tried to keep Him from leaving them.” All too often, the people we love, care for, and serve desire to be with us. Acknowledging their desire, we can easily forget that we need to take care of ourselves as well.