“Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father” (Gal 1:1).
Probably the most persistent threat to the Christian faith is that it is easily diminished to a merely human thing: “from men and through man.” A life that clings to the unseen God in faith is a little like summiting a peak in a storm—there are powerful forces pressuring you to get off and get down as quickly as possible, back to human comforts.
Several months ago I watched a film of a man and his ministry. It was filled with images of things we have lost in an era of technopoly, when everything has 24-hour access to us, and we have 24-hour access to everything. The film, by contrast, was filled with quiet, with deep relationship, patient love, long reflection on worthy objects. Watching it created in me a longing for those things.
But near the end of the film I began to notice it was the man himself who was the center of the narrative, perhaps together with those to whom he was devoted. There was a quiet utopianism suggested in the life he had carved out, an antidote to the lives most of us are living. Without intending to, the film raised a question: is it really true that Christ alone is genuine quiet, Christ who is deep relationship, Christ who is patient love and worthy reflection? Must I have him, or should I just build for myself a more sane existence?
Then a deeper truth, and honestly for me a less attractive truth, began to unfold: the deep, quiet life that Christ gives us is offered not in the absence of the storm, but in the midst of it. “In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer…” (then the basis for cheer) “…for I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).
So here’s a corollate. I’ve always been slightly bummed by Mark 6:30-33, where Jesus says to his disciples, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” Of course, it never happens. They not only fail to escape the ever-present crowds, the crowd actually gets to their destination ahead of them. I mean, seriously. What follows, if you remember, is the feeding of the five thousand. Not only is there no rest for Jesus and the disciples, but they serve the crowd to a “late hour.”
I’ve often thought about this passage when ministry is crazy busy. I’m a person who likes “desolate places” where I can “rest a while,” but all of us know it’s common to end up co-laboring with Christ to a “late hour.” It’s in that hour that we need most to be fed by Christ. But here’s the key caveat: guard against laboring for Christ rather than in Christ. Take as much time as you need to figure out what that means, because what may happen in the meantime is burnout, which will leave you thinking ministry in Christ is impossible. It isn’t. It’s just that there’s a “secret” to it, as Paul says (Php 4:13), and it’s only in learning that secret (“not from men nor through man”) that you withstand the storm, or rather, that he withstands it for us.