Lent 2026 Day 31: Wed 25 Mar
Mark 6:45-46
45 Immediately Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of Him to Bethsaida, while He dismissed the crowd. 46 After bidding them farewell, He went up on the mountain to pray.
This had been a rather busy day for Jesus! He could have returned with the disciples in the boat, taking a well-deserved rest as the others did the rowing. But he didn’t need rest – he needed refreshment. He went off to a high, lonely place to spend time with Father God.
There was a time (though time is not the most helpful word to use when considering eternity) when the Word was with the Father, when our Lord was with Father God. In that state there was a oneness that humans will struggle to comprehend. God the Word and God the Father were united. Thoughts passed freely; each complementing the other; unfathomable love bound them together. The Holy Spirit was there, too, and the three persons were both individual and one. It’s impossible for us to imagine this all-encompassing and timeless unity.
The Word came to this fallen earth in a vulnerable earthly body. He had to do things the way we do them. To reach the Father, Jesus prayed just as we do, and as we need to do, he prayed in faith. His human body had no special privileges beyond those given to all of us when we pray or act in faith. Would God the Word come to earth as a human and then be handed an invincibility shield or a get-out-of-jail-free card? The beautiful feet on this mountain were hard and calloused, stained with the sand, burned by the sun and no doubt smelly. The clothes he wore were not brilliant white, as some artists would like to depict them. There was no halo above his head. He experienced earthly things the way we experience them. Eating a dodgy fish at a meal would have given him the same symptoms as anyone else who had done the same.
Jesus’ time with Father God was not spent presenting him with a shopping list of requests. Just being in the all-encompassing, all-consuming presence of Father God would have been enough. Jesus already knew his mission. Father God knew it, too. They’d agreed to all that before he came to earth, and Jesus had spent his formative years downloading it in detail through studying the Scriptures, discovering both the good and the bad things that he’d experience. He discovered with both confidence and humility who he was. He relied on God’s Holy Spirit who’d come upon him at his baptism and direct and give insight, being the channel by which Father God also directs us and gives us insight.
He will have spent much time simply in communion with Father God. He’d have prayed specific prayers, about his mission; for those disciples who seldom seemed to be on the same hymn sheet as him; for the people he’d just pastored; for the nation; the occupiers; the world he knew. Who knows. There is an awful lot to draw from verse forty-six.
Can you imagine Jesus just spending time, hanging out, chilling with Father God?
Do you hang out with Father God?
Does your church fellowship spend time doing no more than enjoying Father God’s presence?
Father God, you do not want babble or pre-prepared lists. You want me, my heart so that you can reveal yourself, your heart. I give these to you. Amen.
Paul