Watch!

Since today is the election, for those of you who haven’t voted yet, instead of providing you with a devotional thought, I would like to give you who you should vote for if you are a Christian...

...I’m kidding. In fact, I would like to offer something to take our thoughts off of the election and onto something of great importance, Jesus.

In Mark 14:32-42, as Jesus prepares to face the coming ordeal, he takes his disciples about halfway up the side of the Mount of Olives to Gethsemane. He then takes his inner group, the three first chosen to be his followers, Peter, James, and John, to a separate place in the garden. He tells them to stay there and keep watch. Here, the word “watch” is one of great importance. Earlier in Mark 13, Jesus, in telling his followers of the coming of the end, he reminds them that the day and the hour of his return is unknown even to the Son. He then tells them three times to keep watch. He says, “...keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn.” When the rooster crows—possibly a foreshadowing of Peter not watching?

Here, in chapter 14, Jesus once again tells them to watch. He then goes off to pray in agony. “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Jesus is, without a doubt, in deep suffering. He knows what is coming and does not want to go through it; who in their right mind would? So he humbly asks for this cup of suffering to be removed. If he would have left his prayer at that, I wonder if, as the song says, “ten thousand angels” would’ve arrived to destroy the world and set him free. He could have very well made this appeal, but his prayer doesn’t stop there. He then says, “Yet not what I will, but what you will.” In his faithful love, he does not want to break the relationship between the Father and the Son.

In verses 37, 40, and 41, Jesus comes back to find his disciples asleep—three times. Remember, in chapter 13, Jesus has said three times to keep watch. Here, he has told them once again to keep watch and pray, but they fall asleep each time. They still do not understand! In their most powerful test, they are caught sleeping. The disciples have just made the claim that they will stand by their Lord, even if it means death. These brave words are greatly contrasted, though, in their performance. When push comes to shove, they fall asleep.

We are given a beautiful example by Jesus. In his time of terrible suffering, in agony, he still remains faithful: “Not my will, but what you will.” Father, I don’t want this; I don’t understand this! But you are much greater than I; my life is yours. This is our example, yet so many times we are like the disciples. I have made great claims of following Christ to the death, yet, when push comes to shove, I often times catch myself sleeping. We have been told, as we have read in chapter 13, to watch and pray.

Are we diligently watching and praying? Are we daily offering our entire lives as a living sacrifice just as Christ faithfully offered his own life, or do we only make the claim and still follow our own desires? Is it truly not what we will, but what God wills, or have we fallen asleep?