What wisdom does it take to get yourself a death sentence? It seems a ridiculous proposition but it actually required a great deal of wisdom. Everyone else had a plan for Jesus and it required great wisdom to follow God's plan instead. Sometimes it required Him to confront and confuse and other times it required Him to withdraw. Sometimes it required Him to do miraculous signs and other times to refuse to do the same thing.
In all this, the wisdom was in doing what His Father commanded rather than what people wanted or commanded. Can we learn anything from that? We have become obsessed with availability in our times, we have no time for solitude and reflection. Our lives are so busy listening to demands of others that we have no time to listen to God speaking to us. I am perhaps more guilty of this than anyone I know. The tyranny of the urgent with mobile phones and email seems to rule my life and I spend less time in prayer and study than I should.
In Mark's Gospel, in the first chapter, Jesus sets the tone for this life. After an all-night healing session he arose early in the morning and went to a desolate place to be alone in prayer. Many times in the Gospels Jesus does this either alone or with the three disciples closest to Him, Peter and James and John. It is important for us to have those times when we get away from all the noise and demands for our time and attention and be alone with the Lord in a desolate place if we will live as wise people rather than as puppets.
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