38 Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Have you ever felt this way? There are a couple of times in my life when I felt this kind of sorrow. This is not a sorrow where there is a lack of hope. Jesus never had a lack of hope. Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane and is coming to grips with the reality of carrying the weight of the sins of the world on His shoulders. He has never experienced the separation that sin creates. He has never been disobedient. This is not the sorrow of despair either. This is sorrow over sin. We have grown children at this time in our lives. There were points in our journey with each of them that my heart felt this type of sorrow. They had made choices that placed them in very compromising positions, and sin was getting the upper hand. My heart broke. I could see the consequences of their sin and I feared for their futures. This was not an academic grappling with sin’s consequences. I could see sin drowning them and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was facedown before the Lord. I was empty. I could feel the life draining and I wept for my children. Jesus is there with His disciples and all he wants is for them to be with him. He doesn’t want them to drift away. He just wants them to stay present and be attentive. Often the best thing we can do for those who are deeply distressed is to just be with them. But that requires us to put aside our own agenda and put ourselves in their time zone. And this kind of sorrow works on a very different type of clock, so we had better be comfortable with our own sorrow.
The Arnold Journey 