Sometimes little transition passages between Biblical narratives are packed with lessons for us. These few verses are one example of that. Jesus had just finished feeding 5,000 people; an amazing miracle. I’m sure He and the disciples were all tired. No doubt the disciples were looking forward to having Jesus to themselves for a while; after all, they were the ones doing the work of organizing the meal and serving all those hungry folks. They deserved some rest.
The first thing I notice is that Matthew says “immediately”. This implies no down time, no sitting for a spell, no break. Right away, Jesus “made” the disciples get into a boat and go on without Him. This implies it wasn’t really what they were thinking they were doing right away; but however it happened, He made them do it. He told them to go ahead of Him to the other side, and they left Jesus with all those people. That seems a bit strange to me, since the disciples had been the ones dealing with the people up until now; however, they left. Meanwhile, as they were leaving, Jesus “dismissed the crowd”. He was done His teaching and lunch session. Basically, He told them it was time to go home.
After everyone was gone, Jesus “went up on a mountainside by Himself to pray”. There’s the reason: He needed to be alone to meet with God. He stayed there until evening; and He was still alone. Obviously praying and being with God for an extended period of time was important to Him. The disciples were already well out on the lake and He walked to them between 3 and 6 a.m.; that’s a pretty long time in prayer.
On reading this, I felt my conscience pricked right away and realized there was something here I needed to learn. I’m often very busy; and in the name of ‘ministry’ I linger far too long after I am finished, thinking that it’s important to let people stay as long as they want before I am entitled to time alone. Jesus’ example tells me that He immediately prepared for His time with God; first of all by asking His disciples to leave. Who would be an equivalent in my life? My children, my spouse, my co-workers and fellow labourers? These are all the people closest to me, that are around me most of the time. Do I need to tell them that I must have time alone with God? Do I need to leave and go somewhere and ask not to be disturbed? When I do walk alone in the forest and pray (which is my habit), can I take steps to make sure I’m not interrupted? Do I need to (gasp) leave my phone at home?
For me, making sure I’m alone isn’t that big of a challenge anymore. Everyone understands I take spiritual retreat days and my time with God in the morning isn’t to be disturbed. Far more intrusive are my thoughts, my plans, my worries; these buzz around in my head relentlessly and as soon as I settle my mind to pray they hurry back to distract me even as I pray about them. I find my mind circling the problem over and over rather than leaving it with God. Distractions are a huge issue for me. This is where the passage was the most helpful for me. Jesus “dismissed the crowd”. I have a large crowd of 5,000 things in my head, every day – and I have to dismiss them. It wasn’t enough for me to just acknowledge I had to do this, I found out. I had to deliberately deal with each random thought. I called each one to mind (most often they came on their own), and I decisively told them to go. “Thanks for that reminder, you may go now” or “yes, I’ll see you later” or even “depart from me you worker of iniquity!” I resumed the habit of keeping a writing pad with me to deal with things that needed to get done; this is an effective way to put them out of my mind, I’ve found. Sometimes this process takes a fairly long time, but where appropriate I place all of these things down before the Lord and leave them there. Then I deliberately turn away from them to ‘go up on the mountainside’ as it were. Leave my worries, cares, responsibilities, ideas, plans, etc etc etc behind me and raise my mind to where God is so that I can talk to Him without all of the mental interruptions. Any time something sneaks back in, I just give it to God.
Try this for yourself! I find my fellowship with God is sweeter and my prayers are complete when I’ve handed everything to Him. He has blessed me in this too, for once it’s time to leave Him and go back to the disciples, I’m walking above my troubles rather than drowning in them. That blesses everyone around me too, I think.
Christian Contemplative Journey 
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