Sunday, July 22, 2012: Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

In 1991 I attended the ELCA National Youth Gathering in Dallas with thousands of other high school kids from across the country and around the world for worship, service and Bible study. In addition to being fun and exciting, the trip expanded my view of and encounter with the church. I grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota, after all, where I was used to worshiping regularly with about 70 people. So I still get the chills when I remember saying the Lord’s Prayer with 27,000 “new friends” and hearing it echo throughout a convention center.

I remember how my parents told others at church about the trip later. They’d say, with an amused smile, that when they picked me up from the bus I didn’t stop talking during the two- and-a-half-hour drive home. “And then,” they’d add with a dramatic pause (and some relief), “she slept.”

Mark tells us about a time when the disciples gave in to their fatigue. “The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.”