One of the images I like to use for dealing with feelings, is a beach ball. When you take a large beach ball into the ocean and throw yourself on it, it supports your weight, but it sinks down. The beach ball would prefer to bounce about on top of the water, without be pushed down.
Feelings are like the beach ball. When we push down on them, they stay inside us without finding a way out. Just as what happens when you move away from the beach ball beneath you and the beach ball pops up, so too, when we allow our feelings to be expressed, they rush out of ourselves and we find peace.
In today’s passage, Jesus is so sad about his cousin John the Baptist having been beheaded. He wants to be alone. Yet compassion for the suffering crowd has him shift his awareness. His sadness lifts as he turns his attention to the needy crowds, as though he is moving off of a “beach ball” weighed down by sadness, to love for serving and healing others.
Feeling compassion for someone else’s hurts helps to heal our own hurts.
Check out Study Tools in BibleGateway.
I especially recommend the free resource
in Matthew Henry’s Commentary.
Sundays are dedicated to the Gospels from the Lectionary,
During most of Lent and Easter we read the Gospel of John.
These Firestarters are from a new edition of The Bible Through the Seasons being developed for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook. You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or table! Check the menu options at the site for more information.
The Bible Through the Seasons 