Comfort Items

Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.  These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff--no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.  Wear sandals but not an extra tunic.  Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town.  And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them."  They went out and preached that people should repent.  They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.  (Mark 6:7-13)

                When the pilot makes the passengers turn off their I-Pads for landing it’s pretty much look out the window or read the in-flight magazine.  I was in the aisle yesterday, so I was reading some travel tips in the magazine.  Here’s one that made me think:   “don’t wear big jewelry when you fly because it will set off the metal detector and somebody might steal it.”  Okay, that may be true, but the more compelling reason for me to resist the temptation to wear big jewelry when I fly is that I don’t need it.  Why would I haul around something I don’t need when I’m trying to get somewhere?

                My aversion to carrying unnecessary things, like so many of my ingrained habits, is probably something I acquired in the military.  When you carry your world on your back you become pretty discerning about even the small things you put in your rucksack because the weight adds up.  Of course, about some things you have no choice.  You have to take the gear you need to accomplish your mission.   If they send you out there to blow up a bridge, you are probably going to need some explosives.  And that stuff is usually pretty heavy.  All the other stuff, what we called Comfort Items (like food and sleeping bags), that was pretty much up to you.  I generally found that the more trained and disciplined a soldier was, the fewer Comfort Items he put in his rucksack.  The inverse was also true.  The softer the man—the heavier his rucksack was likely to be—and the more quickly his ability to accomplish the mission would degrade, as the weight of his bag full of Comfort Items ground him down.  In contrast, the disciplined soldier froze at night, but he travelled light.  When it came time to perform his mission, his energy wasn’t sapped by having hauled fifty pounds of big jewelry around on his back for a week. 

                In Mark 6, we see that Jesus gave the Twelve a pretty short packing list for their journey:  a staff and sandals.  The rest of the stuff, like bread and money?  Comfort Items—unnecessary to the Twelve’s mission to preach repentance and heal the sick.  I assume, as apparently the Twelve did, that if they needed something on their journey the Lord would provide it.  They didn’t need to carry their world around with them and they knew it, because their trust in Christ, and their self-discipline, had continually increased as they matured in Him.

As did the Disciples, it seems to me that as we mature as men we should be becoming more disciplined, with less need for Comfort Items in our rucksacks and more energy to accomplish the mission He has set out for us.  This should also be a lesson for the younger men who watch us to determine those things necessary and not in their rucksacks.  But is it so?  Are we maturing in Him as we age in years and learning to travel light?  Or, are we grinding down under the weight of the big jewelry that we should have long ago discarded, trudging on with a huge rucksack of Comfort Items that bring us nothing but discomfort and keep us from accomplishing our mission?