Today's Gospel seems so simple and so straight forward, yet there are some very important parts we must not miss!
Luke starts us off by telling us that "Jesus departed to the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God."
I love reading about when Jesus goes off to be by himself with God. If Jesus needs to spend time praying, and he is the Son of God, how much more do we need to do this? We are also told he spent the night praying. Jesus is about to fully begin his ministry and mission. This is a critical time where he is about to choose the 12 men to join him. He is about to call the 12 whom he will be spending most of his time and will be working closely with! This is not something to be taken lightly and Luke shows us that Jesus spent all night in prayer.
When he called the 12, they were ordinary men! He didn't call the best scholars, the wealthy, the professionals, or anyone with any visible special qualities. He chose regular men who did regular, every day things. He didn't see them as the men they were at the time, he saw who and what they had the potential to become.
Jesus is the greatest example of leadership we could ever ask for. He took men willing to follow and willing to work and he shared his vision. He got them to buy into that vision and they literally changed the world!
How often do you genuinely go to God in prayer before big decisions? How often do you spend time away form everyone else to be with him before you are doing something new? Jesus shows us that we need to spend time in prayer before doing new things and making big decisions. He shows us the importance of seeing the potential in people and not just seeing them for who and what they are at the time.
The final thought on this reading is that people flocked to Jesus to be healed. This is not the only place in scripture we see this. People heard of the power he had. Even the demons knew what he was capable of. We need to approach Jesus this way. We need to stop hoping he can heal us or help us when we need it, we need to KNOW he can! We need to go to him expecting great things and stop hoping for them to happen!
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