Tidal Islands

Then He commanded the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed them. He broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. Everyone ate and was filled. Then they picked up 12 baskets full of leftover pieces! Now those who ate were about 5,000 men, besides women and children. Immediately He made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He dismissed the crowds. After dismissing the crowds, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray. When evening came, He was there alone. - Matthew 14:19-23 HCSB

[1] Some Christians act as though they are continental shelves, massive, immovable, supporting entire civilizations and constantly necessary.

Our Lord gave us a different perspective. He acted like a tidal island, a piece of land that is connected to mainland at low tide and separated at high tide.

All of us need to recharge from time to time. Even the Son of God periodically dismissed the crowds and went off by Himself to pray. The difference is that the Christ never promoted monasticism. Not in the sense that many take it. He never taught His disciples to permanently isolate themselves from the world - far from it. He constantly taught, both by word and deed, to reach out to others and love them sacrificially. He fed the crowds and healed the sick. He gently taught those who acknowledged their sinful state and lovingly rebuked those who refused to.

As John Milton wrote, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat…”[2]

Yet we must also acknowledge our weakness and humanity. We must return to our Father’s throne and there renew our commitment to His cause. We need to seek His face and thereby recall the sense of urgency that was the first impulse of our ransomed hearts.

In this constant ebb and flow, prayer must be balanced with action; contemplation with involvement; the monastery with the mission. As the great prophet Moses warned, “Cursed is anyone who does not put the words of this law into practice.”[3]

Herein lays the source of life on our island. Here is the remedy for the stale spiritual life and the burnt out hulk of an overused soul. Time spent alone at the Holy Spirit’s feet enriches our souls and the teachings we glean there are confirmed by committing them not only to memory but to our lives.

We are allowed to make a tactical withdrawal to a spiritual retreat when we must, but soon we must return to the battle front before we are charged with dereliction of duty.



[1] Cumulus Over High Tide Island; oil on birch panel by Susan Gosselin
[2] Areopagitica; 1644
[3] Deuteronomy 27:26