Unshakable friendship

One of the deepest hurts we can get are from the ones we love. The people who are past your initial defenses and have access to the sweet, tender, and unguarded parts of your heart. This is usually an appropriately small group of people, close family members, deep friends, a spouse. To be close shows a deep trust in them, and isn’t done quickly or easily for most of us.

In Mark 14:32-42 we find Jesus praying in the garden, his soul crushed with grief as he anticipates his impending death on the cross. Peter, James, and John were asked to stay with him, to keep watch with him while he prayed. They didn't do so well.

Have you ever been let down by a friend? Have you been deeply hurt by someone inside your inner circle? Just before his execution, Jesus was let down by his friends three times. We know there are more failures of nerve later on as Jesus’ friends fail to acknowledge him, or associate with him, but the pain of being let down in this moment would have been like having the wind knocked out of you. But Jesus didn’t shy away from his disciples after they let him down. He didn’t downplay their shortcomings, but he didn’t remove them from his inner circle either.

Know that if you feel like you’ve let Jesus down, he does not reject you. Even if that’s what we tend to do when hurt deeply, Jesus demonstrated his love for his disciples in that even after his closest friends on earth couldn’t stay awake for one night, he went willingly to death on the cross for them. For those of us who are in Christ, we have a deep, abiding, and unshakable friendship with this Jesus, regardless of our ability or inability to “stay awake.”


Mark 14:32-42