There’s a particular story in the Bible that I can’t get off my head. I pondered on it first in 2018 and each time I think about it, the message appears more profound than it appeared previously.

Just follow my analogy:

Jesus’s most vulnerable moment in the Bible was at the garden of Gethsemane. It was the one time the Bible recorded his humanness and how overwhelmed Jesus felt knowing that he would soon be arrested, tried and crucified.

He needed to be with people he loved and could trust. Of all his disciples, he picked his three favourite (Peter, James and John) to pray with him.

He had told them that his soul was grieved to the point of death. I can imagine how scared and lonely he must have felt.

But not long after he has started praying, he looked back and saw his three favourites asleep. Imagine telling your best friends about how overwhelmed and scared you are, and seeing them fall asleep as you all prayed. He woke them up and begged them to keep praying.

Interestingly, when he came back the second time, he saw that they had all fallen asleep again. He was disappointed. “So you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour?”, he asked.
Obviously, he knew what was to happen but he needed them to be with him as he agonized.

Disappointed, but he went back the third time to pray. This time, the Bible said, he fell down to his face AND PRAYED WITH ALL HIS MIGHT.

He was tired, scared, angry, disappointed but when he went the third time, he prayed with every fibre of his being. The message is deep.

We understand that all these happened so that the scripture could be fulfilled but at the time it happened, the disciples didn’t know they were fulfilling scriptures. They were just people and despite their love for Jesus, they slept on him at his most vulnerable moment.

This story always gets me thinking about how many times I must have slept on people who needed me. I may or may not have known how much they needed me to just be there, but even if I did, could have been able to show up?

More importantly, the story makes me rethink my opinion about people when they are unable to be there for me in times that I needed them to. Some of life’s issues are very personal. The people who love us the most are either unhelpful or they simply can’t understand our pain.

Jesus knew that his disciples loved him. This battle just wasn’t what they could understand; they could afford to sleep. He couldn’t make them understand, so he prayed alone, and with all his might. He didn’t dwell on the disappointment. Even for Jesus, life became personal.

We need discernment because life is not always black or white. The greatest evil can result from the best intentions. The closest people will not be able to help our problems sometimes and in those times, I hope, like Jesus, that we can give all our might alone every time.