Scripture
Our verse for today comes from Mark 14:37, ” And He came and found them sleeping, and He said to Peter, ‘Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?’ “
Background
If you are thirty-five years old, you have lived for more than 306,000 hours. If you are blessed to be at least fifty years old, then your life has lasted more than 438,000 hours. That’s a lot of hours. In fact, if you had driven sixty miles an hour for those 438,000 hours, you could have driven to the moon 110 times. You could have driven back and forth from Raleigh to Los Angeles over 5,100 times. You could have watched more basketball games than State, Duke, Carolina, and Kentucky combined have ever played. You also could have sung almost nine million three-minute-long hymns, have prayed the Lord’s prayer more than 52,000,000 times, and even read the entire Bible over 6,300 times. A lot can be accomplished in fifty years. A lot can be accomplished in one hour, too. Or not.
Application
When Jesus went off by Himself to pray in the garden, Mark records only two sentences that He said to His Father. Two short, intense sentences where Jesus captures the entire existence of the believer. All things are possible for God, and I submit My will to Yours. That’s all we learn from apparently an hour of prayer time that Jesus had with God. It doesn’t fill up a lot of pages, but nothing less should ever be prayed, and nothing more could ever be uttered. So how appropriate it is that Jesus had hoped for Peter to stick it out with Him and pray during that time as well. But in his hour, very little happened. Or did it? For as Jesus woke Peter up, He warned him to pray lest he succumb to temptation. But you can’t threaten prayer into someone, can you? You rarely can coerce behavior by warning what’s to come. And so Peter slept again. He did nothing, and his fate was sealed. And when the cock crowed, he probably wished he had that hour in the garden back to do all over again. But even my little message about how we use our hours won’t change you unless you seek it. Realizing Peter’s failings won’t put anyone on their knees. You must seek it. It’s only an hour, but then again, it’s only an hour.
Charge
As we seek Him today, ask God for the desire to seek Him. Seek Him in search of that desire. Don’t let one hour pass that you’ll want to do over
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Author – Rich Holt | BCWorldview.org
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