Christ's Sympathy with Pauses in Labour

“They passed through GaUlee; and He would not that any man should know it.” — Mark ix. 30.

I THINK this passage reveals a singular experience on the part of the Son of Man. You must carefully distinguish it from those passages in which He wishes to conceal His Messiahship. Here it is not His Messiahship that He wants to hide, but Himself; He desires no one to be told that He is passing through Galilee. It is quite a common thing for kings and great personages to travel incognito. Their motive in so doing is to avoid publicity. They are oppressed by the weight of their own personality. They are weary of being objects of the world’s wonder. They are tired of being surrounded by crowds, whose only purpose is to gaze. If they were helping these crowds, they would feel otherwise; but to stand as a target for curiosity is to bear the fatigue of the treadmill — to bear a fatigue which accomplishes no work and achieves nothing for the 268

world. Now, in one of His journeys, Jesus had this desire to be hid, to be saved from any weariness which was not part of the redemption of mankind. I am glad that the evangelist has recorded this seemingly commonplace experience. I am glad he has recorded it, just because it is commonplace. I like to think of every experience of my life as having found a counterpart in Christ. It is more easy to find these counterparts in proportion as we ascend to great things. The bankrupt may find it in His impoverishment, the physical suiferer in His pain, the bereaved in His Bethany, the deserted in His betrayal, the hungry in His wilderness, the thirsting in His cross, the homeless in His having not where to lay His head, the sleepless in His midnight tossing on the waves. But there are little moments less grave than these for which yet we fain would find a counterpart, times when we are not miserable, but just weary of the burden and the heat, and longing for a holiday of change. Is it not something to know that these commonplace moments, these unromantic moments, these moments which seem the most unheroic in the life of man, have found a kindred spot in the sympathy of Him who, in the days of His flesh, bore the frailty of our frame?

Lord, I thank Thee for this sidehght on Thy sympathy. It gives a solemnity to the things I thought least solemn — my hours of relaxation. I have always associated Thy sympathy with my hours of toil. I have had no difficulty in praying for Thy presence in the sphere of duty, in the discharge of my work for my brother man. But it never occurred to me to say, “Be with me in my desire for a holiday, in my search for relaxation of the business cord.” At such times I seemed to myself a trifler, a poor creature, a revealer of the weak side of human nature. I shall not think so any more. In Thy desire to pass through Galilee unknown to the crowd, I shall see henceforth the sanctifying of what I call my hour of idleness. For, let me not forget, O Lord, that there are holy thoughts which can only come through a holiday. Many a ship of beauty passes unseen, in the night which my own anxiety has made. Many a rose of comfort has been covered unwittingly by my own working hand. Many a song of immortal hope has been curtained from my ear by the roar of the loom and factory. Many an angel’s wing has been hid from my view by the smoke and dust of duty’s battle. I thank Thee that Thou hast sympathy with my strain ot tension. I bless Thee that I can think of my 270

relaxation as Thy rest. I praise Thee that in the unbending of my bow I can see the breaking of Thy bread. I laud Thee that I can cease to deem my hour of freedom an hour of frivolity. The secrecy of Thy road through Galilee has made it religious to repose.