Downtime - Peter’s Mother-in-law

Matthew 8:14-15; Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:38-39

Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, had a mother-in-law. Which meant, of course, he had a wife. Surprised? Peter did have a wife, and tradition says she even accompanied him on his missionary journeys after Jesus’ death. His wife had a mother, who, not uncustomarily for that time, lived with her daughter and her daughter’s husband.

Three of the Gospels mention Peter’s mother-in-law (whose name is not given), and they all tell the same story. Jesus had just left the synagogue after preaching with authority and commanding an impure spirit to come out of a man. The spirit obeyed. This amazed the people.

Afterward, Jesus went to Peter’s home and found Peter’s mother-in-law in bed with a fever. Jesus simply went to her, touched her, and helped her out of bed, and her fever was gone. She went about her day, waiting on Jesus and presumably the others in the home. Later that evening, because of what Jesus had done, many demon-possessed people were brought to him to heal.

We don’t know how many hours passed between the time that Peter’s mother-in-law was healed and Jesus started driving out demons, but it seems that perhaps for an afternoon, Jesus had some downtime at a friend’s house.

Do you ever think of Jesus that way? Hanging at his buddy’s house, having a friend’s mom wait on him and others, doing the ancient-day equivalent of chilling? Think about it. Jesus took a few hours to get away from the responsibilities of his ministry, enjoy the company of friends, and recharge between exorcisms.

How often do you give yourself time to take a break from your responsibilities and recharge? Your responsibilities might not be as heavy as casting out demons, but people often feel they need to be available to their employers twenty-four hours a day. With today’s technology, it’s easy to put in several more hours of work once you get home from the job.

If even Jesus needed time to recharge, don’t you? If you haven’t been carving out some time for yourself to be away from your work responsibilities, how can you start doing that this week?

For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1