Enjoy the Journey Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

It is summer time, vacation time, and we need to meditate about the importance of finding moments of peace and solitude with God. We should learn not only to make plans to travel to enjoy our favorite thematic park or attractions, but also we need to make plans  to have our own vacation with God and time with Jesus.
Ours is a faith in a person: Jesus, the Son of God.
If we need to cultivate our friendships and to know more about our significant others, in the same way we need to cultivate our time and develop more deeply our relationship with God through one more deeply and intense relationship with the one who is the way to God: Jesus. 
For this reason, I invite you today to plan to have not only a vacation with your spouse, children or friends, but also to make plans to have a vacation with Christ, a Sabbath with Jesus.
It is not a bad idea to have a break and to have time off just to rest in Christ. The reading of the Gospel today says that Jesus said to his disciples:
“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.”
I remember many conversations with “churchy” and “un-churchy” people about the need for rest, retreat, solitude and renewal.
Everybody agrees that those are great words, ideas and desires, but that it is very difficult to find time to practice them unless you are already planning to retire.
The fact is that our vacation time can also be exhausting (and everybody here can recognize that) and many times when we are back from vacations we feel that we are more tired than when we started our vacation time because we were traveling a lot, practicing sports, visiting new places. We are really busy in our activities that when we fare finally back home we do not have the energy to do anything else and then we remember that we need to go back to work again on Monday.
The intensity of our daily routine can be exhausting, the same way that the Gospel says:
“Many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”
I think these words of Jesus are a clear description of the lives of many people today. But imagine if all this business reshapes us in a way that we become too busy to come on Sunday and break the communion bread together? Imagine what could happen in our spirituality if we are too tired to drive to worship, or too tired to pray or read the Bible? 
The Gospel highlights that we need to remember that gathering as a faith community to rest from our intense daily routine and partake a common meal as children of God is an important part of our life together
That is why Jesus invited his disciples to look for a place of refuge and time in solitude and “they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves.”
It is important that you create a time to be with God in solitude. It is important that you enjoy your breaks or your Sabbath as much as you can, because the challenges of the daily life, your daily routine and the people around you will come back very soon.
Imagine the situation, Jesus and the disciples have a place in mind to enjoy time together, but suddenly when they arrive at that place they find a multitude waiting for them with a lot of petitions and urgencies.
My mother used to say: “It does not matter wherever you plan to runaway, the problems will always find a way to meet you there”.
You can make plans but the rhythm of today´s life always conspires against you, the problems will follow you by e-mail, text messages, phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter, etc. Today it is almost impossible to avoid being observed, followed, or tagged in pictures, messages or posts. Everybody knows where we are going and what we are doing. You do not need to be a celebrity to be tagged in a picture; any of your friends or relatives will tag you. For that reason, we are always busy trying to know who is following us.
Jesus lived in a time without social media, but he could not avoid the multitudes neither could have time in solitude with his disciples. “It does not matter wherever you plan to runaway, the problems will always find a way to meet you there”.

How can we rest in this situation? 
The disciples and Jesus rested enjoying a walk together; their journey was their Sabbath. 

Because a great crowd of people in need arrived before them at the place that they planned to use for their retreat, Jesus and his disciples could not enjoy their time in solitude there, but they had the opportunity to enjoy traveling together to that destination.

The story shows us that the Sabbath can happen during the journey or maybe that the Sabbath can be the journey.
Our Sabbath is a time to refresh our love and compassion. Because Jesus is the incarnate love and compassion of God, our time with Jesus will make us receivers of God´s love and compassion and also will prepare us to be givers of these love and compassion.
We are challenged to trust that the renewal and the time in solitude with God could happen during the journey and not only at the final destination. 
For this reason is important to enjoy the journey. Many times we are so focused on the destination that we don’t have the opportunity to enjoy the journey. Many times we believe that the real transformation and joy in our life will take place at the end of the journey (when we finally will retire), but the reality is that the best part of the entire Sabbath with Jesus always takes place during the journey. 
I invite for this reason to enjoy the journey and to see it as the place to have a Sabbath with Christ, living in him, because he is the way, and the destination waiting always for each one of us.