Take the Hint

As seen in the HEARTbeat and the Village Voice

Take the Hint

            Sometimes hints are subtle, and sometimes not so much.  They can come in many different varieties, but hints are always given to help with an outcome.  I can remember in basic training in the Army, the instructor would stomp his boot on the classroom floor when he was trying to make a point.  What was the point?  The hint he was giving is the point of the topic he was teaching was going to be on the test!  I guess that’s a not-so-subtle hint.  But even so, some missed the point, or maybe the hint didn’t stick!

            Hard to believe?  My first teaching position at the university level was a class called General Statistics.  This course was taught through the Psychology Department.  As such, I had a lot of medical-aspiring students who didn’t want to take such a course in the Mathematics Department or the Business Department.  I enjoyed making the students realize that statistics is actually an arithmetic foreign language; if you can’t interpret the findings from an arithmetic language to the English language, you’re no good as a statistician.  During lecture time, I would sometimes lightly stomp my shoe on the floor to drive home a point.  Much to my dismay, some students even then missed the not-so-subtle hint of it being on the test.

            Does the Bible give us any subtle hints?  Oh, there are several scattered throughout the pages.  Some of the not-so-subtle hints are the “Thou Shalt Not” hints given to Moses by God.  God figuratively stomped His foot on the mountainside and told Moses, “These will be on the final exam!”  Of course that is satirical way of stating the obvious, but God gave specific instructions as to how He wanted the nation of Israel to live.  But did Jesus ever give such hints to us?

            How do you recharge your batteries?  In other words, how do you relax and rejuvenate your soul?  We need look no further than the example Jesus gave to us.  Following the news that His cousin John had been beheaded, He was obviously saddened.  This was a man who set the stage for the coming Messiah.  Jesus was grieved by the news of John’s death.  Even so, Jesus saw a crowd of people following along the bank as they pushed the boat away from shore.  They put the boat into shore and Jesus fed the 5,000 men, plus the women and children.  Jesus was tired and needed to grieve.  He sent the disciples ahead in the boat while He went up on a hillside to commune with His Father.

            Jesus also withdrew from the apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He knew what would happen the next day and, needless to say, He was stressed.  He took Peter, James, and John with Him part of the way and asked them to pray and keep watch.  Jesus was in agony, but found comfort in what the Father was asking of Him by spending time in prayer with God.

            Are you stressed?  Are you troubled?  Take the hint given to us by Jesus.  Remove yourself from the world by finding a quiet place free from the noise of this world and spend time with the Father.  He will comfort and re-energize you for the tasks ahead!