RETREAT!

1 Samuel 26:1-28:25; John 11:1-54; Psalm 117:1-2; Proverbs 15:22-23

“But David kept thinking to himself, ‘Someday Saul is going to get me. The best thing I can do is escape to the Philistines. Then Saul will stop hunting for me in Israelite territory, and I will finally be safe.’ So David took his 600 men and went over and joined Achish son of Maoch, the king of Gath.”

“So from that time on, the Jewish leaders began to plot Jesus’ death. As a result, Jesus stopped his public ministry among the people and left Jerusalem. He went to a place near the wilderness, to the village of Ephraim, and stayed there with his disciples.”

“Plans go wrong for lack of advice; many advisers bring success. Everyone enjoys a fitting reply; it is wonderful to say the right thing at the right time!”

As more and more of the future is revealed, one question keeps coming to mind with a fair amount of insistence. Where does one go when adversity closes in? Who can we trust with our vulnerabilities and our fears? Jesus and David both faced similar challenges. They were persecuted, sought out and harassed by their enemies until literally no place was safe. Yet, they also still had others depending on them, trusting them to lead and care for them. It was not a time to show uncertainty or timidity. Both men responded the same way, so it must be important to note. They gathered their most loyal and trusted followers to them and beat a hasty retreat into the relative safety of the wilderness to rest and rejuvenate.

Retreat is such a distasteful word for many of us. For whatever reason, it has lost most of its practical meaning and has become either soaked in religiosity or scorned as an indicator of cowardice. Yet if we are even remotely sensitive to the way these heroes of the Bible lived their lives, we have to know retreat is a specific life strategy not only ordained by God but encouraged by Scriptures, especially when the going gets tough. The problem, I think, is that we have wrongly reversed the intent of retreat as the Lord intended it, and as David and Jesus lived it. Retreat, in their minds, had much less to do with running away from adversity and threats than it indicated a retrenching of faith and reliance on the Holy Spirit and our fellow disciples.

Yesterday, in fact, faced with what is surely going to be a challenging year where every bit of faith and courage we can muster will be critical, I gathered with the officers of our Sunday school class for a day in the country. Our goal was to try to discern and agree with one heart and the mind of Christ on a vision of God’s Will for the coming year for our class. Everyone had the sense of a call much greater than that of an ordinary “class,” but none of us coming in understood much more than that. Nevertheless, in retreat – for the most part – from the distractions of life and our cell phones, we came away united with a strong and bold vision for the plan and role Christ has in store for us, and a rededicated commitment to discovering and implementing the practical nuts and bolts of that vision. In one sentence, to get spiritual clarity, we did not so much retreat from the world as we retreated into the sanctuary of the Spirit. There was not an ounce of cowardice or “holier than thou” in our actions; our “retreat” simply made good spiritual and tactical sense.

Every act of moving (or running) away from one thing is also a moving toward something else. We can choose to run from danger and insecurity toward greater fear and chaos, or we can reprogram our thoughts and efforts more productively to run toward Jesus in times of crisis. There is no shame in recognizing when we cannot get through life on our own. The shame comes when we fail to believe and recognize that Christ is waiting for us just beyond the horizon of our myopic vision to welcome, restore and strengthen us. All we need do is turn our retreat toward Him.