“But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.”
Luke 5:16
This weekend the Rite 13 group will go away to what I am almost positive will be a “deserted place,” Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The weather is supposed to hover right around 45-50 degrees and be generally overcast with some rain. I’m guessing we’ll be some of the only people on the beach. We are making our biennial retreat away, the last big adventure that this group will undertake as Rite 13-ers, having worked, played, learned and fundraised for the past two years together.
I suspect that we, while also “withdrawing,” will pray, eat, laugh, be quiet, read Holy Scripture, study, do homework, and worship together (at least three times a day we will gather for worship). But we will also look for and hopefully find God and the risen Christ while we are away this weekend.
Where do you go when you need to recharge, when you need to find God, or just be in your own deserted place to pray? If you haven’t found one of those places, take a walk down the hill from the church to the Bishop’s Garden, or find a quiet spot in church to stop, be still, withdraw and pray. God knows where you are and God will show up.
Pray for us this weekend as we will be praying for you.
The Daily Cup 
I always think of retreats as the Flight into Egypt; a retreat is not necessarily a safe and secure place. It is fraught with danger and discomfort and it is almost as if only among the outcasts, the bandits and forsaken men that one finds God.
For Christ is a dark, hidden, secret and dangerous “Way” and general happiness and well being while it may be a gift from God for a time, do not constitute His core. For we do not go into the world after our retreat to conform to the world but to walk there as the compassion and judgment of Christ. For if we do not feed the hungry, we are judged, no matter what the world and our general happiness and well being may dictate.
Apparently, you forgot to mention the Arcade…