There is much I want to write tonight, but for time’s sake, I will have to let it keep for another post and then another. 🙂 Not hurting for writing material, just for time to write, and the ability to organize my thoughts.
Have you ever noticed how the disciples fell asleep while Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before His arrest? But then have you ever wondered how or who recorded the beautiful prayer that He prayed? Well, he invited Peter, James, and John to keep watch. Only John wrote a gospel letter. John’s gospel is the only gospel account from a disciple, and not any disciple. John was one of Jesus’s three closest disciples, and calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved.
I wonder if, in Jesus’s darkest hour, if John was like the friend who sticks closer than a brother? Just a question and observation, as surely John falls asleep too. Yet this detail is not disclosed in his gospel. Nor does he reference Gethsemane. John must have been awake for some of the anguish in prayer that Jesus endured in order to record it later.
John 13-17 is called the Upper Room Discourse, and is found nowhere else in Scripture, but surely, most of this teaching was done as they walked to the Garden to pray. Again, I am no theologian, just a reader, but what if, they ask him again and again where he is going, because they are walking and following and not really knowing where they were headed? And Jesus uses their confusion about the matter to teach them the truth about where He is truly about to go.
What if the Garden had vines, and He taught them about Himself and the Father using vines from the Garden? What if the disciples were awake a lot longer than we know because whoever Matthew or Mark or Luke interviewed or learned the story from felt some guilt over falling asleep and also did not remember the details like John did.
These are the things about Scripture that fascinate me.
“Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” John 1:1-5
Eternal life is in knowing God the Father and the Son, Jesus. I started this post with the intent to think about praise, but now I am meditating on all kinds of fun facts that will have to marinate for a bit.
So I leave you with this song of praise.
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In the meantime, what do you think about all my crazy questions?
I love your inquisitive mind and those are questions I haven’t asked before, but I can definitely understand you asking. My questions have always been more “feeling” / psychology related. Like, I wonder what was going through Peter’s mind at several different points. For example, when Jesus asked him three times, if Peter loved Him. That passage makes me tearful because I see so much of myself in Peter and I find it so beautiful because I see it as Jesus freeing Peter from his past.