A Passion for Winning Men: The Motive-power of Service.

(Mark vi:30-34.)

A Day off.

One morning toward the end, in the midst of His busiest campaigning, Jesus was very tired. It is one of the touches of His humanness. So He said to His disciples, "Let us take a day off." And they could see the sense of it. They were tired too. So they got a boat, and boarded her, and set sail, and headed out across the lake. And meanwhile a crowd of people had come down to the beach to be talked to, and healed, and helped in various ways.

And you can just see the look of disappointment in their faces as they say, "Why, He's going away." And for a few moments they stand there utterly dejected. Then somebody--for a long while I have thought it was a woman--somebody with eyes keenly watching the direction of the boat, said, "I believe He's going so and so"--naming a place across the lake--"let's run around the head of the lake, and meet Him when He gets out."

And the crowd was taken with that. And they ran--literally ran--around the head of the lake. And as they went they spread the word, "The Master's going so and so. Come along with us." And the people came eagerly out of the villages and cross-roads. And the crowd thickened and the longer way around in distance proved the shorter way there in time. For by and by when Peter ran the nose of the boat into the sand on the other side, and the Master got out for a day off, there were five thousand men, maybe ten thousand people waiting to receive Him.

Do you think that Peter scrooged down his eyebrows, and in a jerky voice said, "They might have given Him one day to Himself. Can't they see He's tired?" Do you think that likely John chimed in, with that fire in his voice which the after years mellowed and sweetened but never lost,--"Yes, how inconsiderate a crowd is!" Do you think so? I do. Because they were so much like us. But He--the most tired of them all--"was moved with compassion," and spent the whole day in teaching, and talking personally, and healing. And then when they had gone He went off to the mountain for the quiet time at night He could not get in the daytime.