Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses.  But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.  Luke 5:15-16

This is a familiar verse to teach us to withdraw from the demands of our busy lives to spend time in prayer.  I’ve shared this in my Dependence Devotional, where we picture all the jostling, needy, never-ending crowd pressed against us, demanding our attention, and yet, like Jesus, we manage to slip away to spend delightful time with God.  And this is still true.  However, what about when we can’t yet slip away?

A friend of mine recently shared about the demands of caring for both her aging parents and her children.  It brought me back to that picture of Jesus, surrounded by all those clamoring people, hearing and feeling and faced with their urgent demands.  He was in that place for a time before he slipped away.  My friend is now in that before time.  While she can still pray in this season, there is also value is recognizing that she is, like Jesus for a time, not yet slipped away.

My prayer for her is that she will know that Jesus has been where she is and that Jesus, creator of all things, Lord of All, full of God’s holy power and authority, did not even try to meet every real need and demand.  (He did lovingly heal some – I don’t know how or why Jesus made his selection, only that it was for God’s glory, and somehow, that doesn’t require doing it all.)  I pray she can find and worship Jesus in the midst of all the clamor, to trust and rest and surrender and worship and be filled, and then choose with Jesus the demands that will be addressed and which clinging fingers to gently unfold and slip away from.

It is comforting to me to know Jesus is with me in the clamor.