Sleeping or Seeking?

After sharing what He said would be their final meal together, their hearts were broken.

Betray their Master?

Surely none of them would do something so horrible.

Shed His blood?

He promised to deliver them, now He’s saying He’s going to die.

The heaviness that hung over the group of disciples that evening was thick.

As was the heaviness in the heart of their Beloved Jesus.

Kneeling down to pray, his passion was clear. “Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” (Luke 22:42)

He knew what was coming. He knew that soon His body would be broken and his closest friends would turn their backs on Him as He hung bleeding.

“And being in agony He prayed more earnestly…” (v.44)

Meanwhile He left his heavy hearted disciples a stone’s throw away trying to make sense of it all. As He approached the group of men He’d spent so much time ministering with, ”He found them sleeping for sorrow.” (v.45)

Until today I’d never really thought that much about those slumbering students of the Savior, after all it was getting late wasn’t it? But as I studied this passage, the Lord spoke.

The disciples were sleeping because the sorrow was too much for their human hearts to take and often I find myself doing the same thing. When facing a trial or frustrated with circumstances, I’ve chosen sleep over seeking. While sleeping, you can forget about the crisis at hand and that’s just what they were attempting to do. They wanted to pretend that last supper never happened so maybe sleeping would do the trick.

Relating with the disciples reaction the Lord challenged me further by His reaction to the hardest trial He would ever face.

“And being in agony He prayed more earnestly.” (v.44)

Only hours from His arrest, Jesus was seeking strength through prayer.

Will I choose to cast my care upon Him or crash into bed so I can sleep my cares away?

Sleeping is definitely the easy way out, but when we wake up in the morning our problems remain.

Seeking takes work, prayer takes patience but the result is so worth it.

So which will it be, sleeping like the twelve or seeking like my Savior?

 

“Pray without ceasing.”

1 Thessalonians 5:17

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