Wallpaper Description:

This is the great prayer Jesus prayed before he went to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is leaving these disciples by means of the garden, the betrayal, the judgment seat of Pilate, and the cross, and to them it appeared that he was abandoning them. They felt frightened, helpless, alone, and unable to understand what was taking place. They could not see that our Lord was merely introducing a higher and a better relationship to them.

Do we not feel this way? God leads us to a place of change and we are frightened by it. We wonder if we are not losing everything we held dear in the past. We scarcely realize that God is but leading us to a higher, a newer, and greater relationship. Like these disciples, we are frightened and fearful.

As we come to these words my concern is how to convey to your hearts something of the gripping reality of these requests of Jesus, something of the intense practicality of what he is saying. I am so afraid that we will listen to these words, as to beautiful poetry or moving drama, and, entranced by their similarity and beauty, fail to realize that Jesus here is actually praying for us -- for what he prays for his disciples he prays for us. I am afraid that we will fail to see behind the beauty of these words to the terrible and glorious realities. This prayer ought to hit us like a punch in the jaw. Or, perhaps, like a hand that grabs us as we are going down for the third time. These words ought to both sober us and comfort us. These are not soft, beautiful words, prayed in a great cathedral. These are earthy, gutty words, uttered on a battlefield in which our Lord is coming to grips with life as it really is, and, as such, they ought to strike that note of reality with us.