Luke 5:11-16: in context

The first disciples leave everything to follow Jesus, and his ministry begins to draw crowds. He cleanses a leper, and though he tells the man to keep silent, the report spreads all the more, and great crowds gather to hear him and to be healed. His fame is growing, the demands on him multiplying, the pressure of the crowds increasing. And in the middle of all this, the text notes a habit of his: but he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.

It is worth noticing when Jesus withdraws to pray: precisely when he is busiest and most in demand. The crowds are swelling, the sick are pressing in, the reports are spreading, and everyone wants something from him. By ordinary logic, this is the moment to keep going, to seize the opportunity, to give the crowds what they want; there is no time to slip away. And Jesus slips away. He withdraws to lonely places and prays, deliberately stepping back from the crowds and the demands to be alone with the Father. The busier he was, the more he seems to have guarded this. There is a lesson here that our busyness constantly tempts us to forget. When life is full and the demands are many, prayer is the first thing we tend to drop; we are too busy, we tell ourselves, too pressed, too needed; we will pray when things settle down. Jesus did the opposite. The pressure of the crowds did not crowd out his prayer; it drove him to it. He knew that he could not pour himself out to others without being replenished from the Father, that the demands could not be met on empty, that the work required the withdrawing. If the Son of God, in the press of his ministry, needed to withdraw and pray, how much more do we. The temptation is to think that when we are busy and in demand, prayer is the luxury we cannot afford; the truth is that it is the necessity we cannot do without. The crowds will always press; there will always be more to do; and the deliberate withdrawing to pray, guarded precisely when we are busiest, is not time stolen from the work but the very thing that makes the work possible. Jesus withdrew to lonely places and prayed; and the busier we are, the more we need to follow him there.

When my life is full and the demands are many, is prayer the first thing I drop, telling myself I am too busy and will pray when things settle, or can I follow Jesus, who withdrew to pray precisely when the crowds pressed most, guarding time alone with the Father as the necessity I cannot do without rather than the luxury I cannot afford?