A Word about Isolation from Matthew 14:23

Today I would like to share a word about isolation as I comment on Matthew 14:23.

My comments today are the third and last in a series of articles about how my military experience as a chaplain has helped me apply Biblical truths to my life as I dealt with stress and difficult times. 

When I commented last, I noted how God had taught me not to borrow trouble from tomorrow and to focus on my current situation. Often, fasting from news media, social media, and other stressful stimuli is the best way to manage our stress. We must be careful, however, not to take that to the extreme.

Once, during an exercise at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, I received a radio message that a Soldier attached to us from another unit was distressed and I needed to check on him. When I arrived at his location, I found the young man sitting in the back of an armored vehicle, incommunicative and staring off into space with what we called the “thousand-yard stare.” 

My Chaplain Assistant and I ushered him into our vehicle and took him back to his own unit and placed him in the hands of their medics. Later, I learned that after a good night’s sleep the young man was fine, but his experience is instructive for us. 

Like Jesus, we do need to separate ourselves from the world from time to time. For example, Matthew 14:23 tells us, “And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.”  The revival preacher Vance Havner preached a sermon called, “Come apart before you come apart,” which is excellent advice.  We must be careful to avoid a trap as we employ this technique, however. If we are not careful, withdrawal from the world can become an end in itself. 

The young Solider at Camp Shelby had withdrawn into himself so much that he has become virtually catatonic. When we withdraw so totally from the world that we fail to engage it at all, then we have taken this too far and we become dysfunctional and emotionally and physically ill.

Jesus did withdraw from the crowds and His Disciples, but only for as long as it took for Him to to recharge His spiritual and emotional batteries. Once He had accomplished this, He reengaged people and continued to pursue His mission of seeking and saving those who were lost. 

Jesus did not allow isolation and solitude become His master, but instead He mastered these for His own purposes. We must learn to do the same, because if we withdraw from this world, we cannot go into it and “make disciples of all people.” If we do, we fail ourselves and our God.

Every blessing, 

Dr. Otis Corbitt