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"Rise, let us be going" - Matthew 26:46
In the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples went to sleep when they should have
stayed awake, and once they realized what they had done it produced despair. The
sense of having done something irreversible tends to make us despair. We say,
“Well, it’s all over and ruined now; what’s the point in trying anymore.” If we
think this kind of despair is an exception, we are mistaken. It is a very
ordinary human experience. Whenever we realize we have not taken advantage of a
magnificent opportunity, we are apt to sink into despair. But Jesus comes and
lovingly says to us, in essence, “Sleep on now. That opportunity is lost forever
and you can’t change that. But get up, and let’s go on to the next thing.” In
other words, let the past sleep, but let it sleep in the sweet embrace of
Christ, and let us go on into the invincible future with Him.
There will be experiences like this in each of our lives. We will have times of
despair caused by real events in our lives, and we will be unable to lift
ourselves out of them. The disciples, in this instance, had done a downright
unthinkable thing— they had gone to sleep instead of watching with Jesus. But
our Lord came to them taking the spiritual initiative against their despair and
said, in effect, “Get up, and do the next thing.” If we are inspired by God,
what is the next thing? It is to trust Him absolutely and to pray on the basis
of His redemption.
Never let the sense of past failure defeat your next step.
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