Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 'Abba, Father,' he said, 'everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.' Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. 'Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?'
Jesus asks his closest friends to simply stay awake with him. Not to do anything. Not to fix anything. Just to be present. And they fall asleep. Three times he comes back to find them sleeping. What strikes me most is that Jesus doesn't abandon them for failing him. He keeps coming back. He keeps asking them to be present. But there's also sadness in it—'Could you not keep watch for one hour?' Sometimes people can't show up the way we need them to. Sometimes the people closest to us are asleep to our actual struggle. That's one of the deepest loneliness of life. But Jesus models something: you ask for presence, you grieve when it's not given, and you still move forward into what needs to happen. You don't make their failure your excuse to not do what's yours to do.
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