Life is draining. If you work hard, the hours of toil on your body and mind take even more out of you. If you’re in any sort of human services or healthcare or ministry, there is a different kind of depletion that happens on an emotional or soul level.
Whatever kind of work you do, where do you go to recharge? To rest? To be refreshed? To be re-created? Where do you go to be refilled so that you can head back out again the next day with something to give to the world?
Then they all went home, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.
John 7:53-8:2
Like all these other folks who had been with Jesus during a busy day, most of us go home. Which is probably as it should be. Jesus, however, did not go home. He went to a mountain, supposedly all night long. It’s not explicitly stated here, but we know from other Gospel accounts that the Mount of Olives was a favorite place of prayer for Jesus.
Work, prayer, more work. People, solitude, more people. Doing, resting, more doing.
That was Jesus’ rhythm.
The exact where, as it turns out, isn’t really as really all that important. A mountain isn’t really any better than a home. What matters is that we make it into a sacred place where our souls can rest, reconnect with the Father, and thus be refilled and refreshed.
Why you go wherever you go at the end of a long day, what you do once you get there—that’s the key. Because tomorrow is coming. You might as well be ready for it.
