The Garden

Photo by christophe Dutour on Unsplash‍ ‍

Jesus wanted friends.

In the Garden called Gethsemane, in Mark 14:32-42, Jesus asked Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?” Why did he care if Pete was sleeping? He didn’t want Peter to fall into temptation, true, but he had just confided with him how heavily troubled his soul was, “very sorrowful, even to death.” Jesus wanted to know people were praying with him. He had told them an hour before that they wouldn’t stand by him, and they had all filled the room with the noise of disagreement. Now, it didn’t help Jesus at all to find that they were just sleeping on him instead.

True friends are there for you, praying with you, and not just praying at arm’s length, but getting in your mess and praying there too. And yet, friends fail, even the very best ones. All friends have limits. There are some messes they just don’t have the empathy or capacity for.

One friend, if you would call on him to save you, sticks closer to you than all the rest: Jesus Christ. He knows what it means to need a friend who can sympathize and be there for you and pray for you. That’s exactly what Hebrews 4:15-16 states, that he is there in heaven praying with you and sympathizing with you whenever you realize you are in a time of need.

And more, in such times, if all friends have let you down, and none of them know it, and they all believe that their heavy eyelids are a sufficient excuse for sleeping on you, and what more can you even say to them?—even then, you have come to a privileged place, a sacred space. You have come to the Garden. You have come to a comprehension: You understand by experience, this much better, the travails of your Savior. As Paul said, you have come to know him and fellowship in his sufferings. And while loneliness is a bitter pill, fellowshipping in true empathy with your Savior, and he with you, is a sweetness unlike any other.