“Stay awake and pray so that you won’t enter into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (v. 38)

Comparatively speaking, so little is asked of a disciple.

The Lord is utterly submitted, utterly burdened, and utterly emptied. His obedience is all the way unto death on a cross in our place.

And, on the same night His Father ordained for Him to bear all of that, so little is asked of His followers:

Pray, and stay alert.

Obviously the human falters here. The flesh falters. Whether it’s those disciples in the garden or it’s you and it’s me, we struggle to really pray, to really hold our hearts attentive. The Lord is among us, and He is enduringly and unfailingly faithful—yet we come up short of even the barest faithfulness.

I don’t have any shortcuts for you here. I don’t have any pithy truism to point you to even a moment of credible faithfulness in the dark. I only have my own admission of the struggle, my own confession of worship and humility in Jesus’ light, and my own hope that He, by grace, would inspire more prayer and attention and integrity than I could ever manage on my own.

May His Spirit inside us be gracious with us, and may we give Him our hearts’ and our minds’ attention.

— Tyler