35 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, 37 and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” 38 And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”39 And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.
Now here is a story of what it means to be one's own person.
Jesus has healed and taught and all the town now clamors for him to come and do this or do that. But in the midst clamor and with much still left undone and many yet still to be healed, Jesus quietly slips away to a solitary place to pray. And when he is finally found he has already determined not to go back but to instead go on.
I read this story and I am almost shocked that he did this. How could he say, "No,"? How could he refuse to go back?
And the answer is, of course, because in the time of deep prayer something inside him told him he needed to be elsewhere and with other people doing other things. He needed to "go on to the next towns".
And of all the miracles Jesus performed in that town that he was in, perhaps this was the greatest: he did the miraculous thing of saying, "No," to the demands of others and, "Yes," to the demand of his own spirit.
When I first arrived here in Lubbock a very wise and thoughtful couple gave me a wall plaque with a quote by e.e. cummings titled "Be":
"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
I'm still fighting. We all are.
And we realize this tremendously difficult truth: that if we are ever going to truly be ourselves, then we have to say, "No," to being anybody else.
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