St Johns with St Barnabas

I thought we might take a brief look at routine this month. Do you like routine, have you even got one? The chances are, yes. Some of us enjoy more variety within that routine than others, but nevertheless routine usually plays an important role in our daily lives for better or worse. My son Nick has settled into a new routine now that, like many others, he is working from home. He has embarked upon a new way of life, that’s shorthand for dieting. So far he has managed to lose four stone. He goes running every day, exercises according to his watch, etc. This is quite miraculous - I seem to have gone in the opposite direction.

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What about Jesus, did he have a routine? Well he’s a bit difficult to pin down in the routine stakes, because he lived the life of an itinerant preacher/teacher/healer. You could say, he and the disciples lived by faith – that is without a regular job with an income - which is not something that many of us are called to do. Even Paul kept on with his tent-making to bring in an income. Jobs tend to bring routine with them. Jesus more often than not was quite good at upsetting other people’s routines, especially that of the Pharisees who were so full of religiosity.

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Luke 21 v 37-38 gives us a brief insight into Jesus’ routine shortly before his death:

Every day he was teaching in the temple, and at night he would go out and spend the night on the Mount of Olives, as it was called. And all the people would get up early in the morning to listen to him in the temple.

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Jesus was a teacher; he faithfully went about his business day by day, he knew he was called to teach. We each have our own God-given specific gift; we might feel it’s not very exciting, it’s very routine or pedestrian, and why can’t we do something like …..? Well I don’t know, only you can answer that one. As Christians we are called to take Jesus as our role model, to exercise a servant ministry, in the home, at work, at school, on holiday, wherever.

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Jesus, as we know, maintained a busy schedule, but only because he took time to be with his Father. He knew he could not do without the power and strength from the Father who fed him emotionally, spiritually and physically.

We too need to spend time with the Father, even better if we can build that time into our routine.