Mark 6:31

“Then Jesus said, ‘Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.’ He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn’t even have time to eat.”

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I love being a father. My 7-year-old daughter Sarah is the joy of my life! At first it was hard, and I’ll admit, there were times when there were times when I didn’t know what I was doing. But as time went on, I began learning how to adapt to fatherhood. I also learned more about Sarah too, like what makes her smile, giggle, and what she didn’t like. But that wasn’t all I learned. To my surprise, I was also learning more about myself and about God, my heavenly father.

For example, Sarah is an avid artist. She loves to color and draw things that make her happy and she’s very good at it! One afternoon I told her that I cleared my schedule for us to be together. I was looking forward to spending quality time with her but what she wanted to do was stay in her room and draw me pictures and give them to me as presents. It was sweet, and although I loved the cute little gifts, deep down inside what I really wanted to do was to spend time with her.

Jesus is the same way. As we read in the Bible verse for this week, we can see that we have something in common with the disciple. We lead busy lives. In fact, the verse says that they were so busy doing good things that they didn’t even have time to eat. Jesus notices this and clears His schedule and invites them to come apart and spend quality time with Him. It made me think of how many times I fall into the trap of being too busy trying to do things for my heavenly father in hopes it would make Him happy or proud of me. Doing those things may be important but what if what my heavenly father wants most of all is to simply spend quality time with me?

As another Father’s Day rolls around, I’d like to challenge each of us to think about how we can give the gift of quality time to the fathers in our lives, including our heavenly father? After all, He’s cleared His schedule just for you.

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Questions

1.Is there something in your life that’s competing with your quality time with your Father?

2.How can you give the gift of time to a father in your life this week?

3.If you met Jesus in person and He cleared His schedule for you one afternoon, what would you plan to do together?