Avoiding Our Pain
Mark 6:30-44, 53-56
Illustration
by J. Dudley Weaver

Henri Nouwen wrote that "our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well. We not only bury our dead as if they were still alive, but we also bury our pains as if they were not really there. We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch, no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game which makes us believe that everything is fine after all" (Reaching Out, pp. 16,17). And so, we just keep going and going and going, but we can't go on forever. Sooner or later it has to stop, you and I have to stop.

Finding Time for Holy Rest, by J. Dudley Weaver