Stay Awake

He asked them to watch with Him.

They slept.

Three times He came and found them. The spirit was willing. The flesh was weak. The hour arrived anyway. They fled. One denied. That is the record of the garden.

The same word is later spoken to churches that will be hunted.

Stay awake.
Watch and pray.
Be sober-minded. Be watchful.
Blessed is the one who stays awake.

The command does not wait for quiet streets. It is given because the streets are not quiet. The body that failed one hour in Gethsemane becomes the body told to keep watch while prisons fill and swords are drawn. Peter, who could not stay awake, writes the letter that says the adversary still prowls. The men who slept later kept the watch until most of them were killed.

Watching is not a mood.
It is not an end-times hobby.
It is the ordinary posture of a people whose Lord sweat blood and whose own bodies are not exempt.

A rampart is not a hiding place.
Neither is a garden.

The ruins remain in view.
So does the watch.

William

William writes from the hills of Galilee, seeking the one story that runs from Genesis to Revelation, centered on Christ alone.