Present, Not Just There

Attitudes Shaped by Grace | Day 34

“Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?’ he asked Peter.” (Matthew 26:40, NIV)

Peace to you as this day begins. Most of us know the moment. The service has gone past the hour, the sermon is still going, and our eyes drift to the clock on the back wall or the watch on our wrist. We want to be there. We came because we love the Lord and want to hear his Word.

Still, part of us has started counting the minutes and thinking about the roast in the oven, the plans for the afternoon, or how long it will take to get out of the parking lot. This morning we look at what one hour meant to Jesus, and at everything he gave beyond it.

There, But Somewhere Else

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took Peter, James, and John farther into the garden of Gethsemane with him. Matthew tells us what he asked of them. “Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’” (Matthew 26:38, NIV). He did not ask them to fix anything or to find the right words. He asked them to stay and keep watch. Then he went a little farther to pray, and when he came back, this is what he found. “Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?’ he asked Peter.” (Matthew 26:40, NIV). They were in the garden, close enough to hear him. They were there, but they were not present. Before the night was over, Jesus found them sleeping a second time and a third.

We know that garden better than we would like to admit. We sit in worship while our thoughts run ahead to the afternoon. We go to the visitation and spend the time thinking about the drive home. We sit with an aging parent while our mind sorts through tomorrow’s schedule. We are at the dinner table, the ballgame, or the bedside, and our attention keeps drifting to the phone in our hand or the list in our head. The world has a name for this. It calls it multitasking, and it treats a divided mind as a skill. Our wandering attention reveals something deeper. We have treated our own comfort and our own plans as more important than the God who speaks to us and the people he places in front of us.

Scripture shows us that being present does not require eloquence. When Job lost his children, his wealth, and his health, three friends named Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar came to comfort him. When they saw him, they wept aloud and tore their robes. Then they did something many of us find harder than speaking. “Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights. No one said a word to him, because they saw how great his suffering was.” (Job 2:13, NIV). Later these same men began to talk, and God himself said they had not spoken the truth about him. Their speeches went wrong. The seven days they spent on the ground with him in silence are the part worth learning from. Sometimes the most faithful thing we can bring into a room full of grief is not an answer but our full attention.

The One Who Stayed Awake

The disciples could not keep watch for one hour. The psalmist describes a very different keeper. “He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:3-4, NIV). On the night his friends slept, Jesus did not. He stayed awake and prayed. Then he got up to meet the men who came to arrest him, and he went to the cross for the very disciples who could not stay awake with him. They scattered that night, but he did not discard them. After he rose from the dead, he came back to them, restored them, and sent them out with his Word.

Jesus was fully present with people in their sorrow as well. Before he went to Bethany, he told his disciples that Lazarus had fallen asleep and that he was going there to wake him up. He knew exactly what he was about to do. Yet when he stood with Mary, the grieving sister of Lazarus, John records what happened. “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ‘Where have you laid him?’ he asked. ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied. Jesus wept.” (John 11:33-35, NIV). He was true God, about to call a dead man out of a tomb, and he was true man, weeping with the people in front of him. He did not hurry past their grief to reach the miracle.

Ruth shows us what this kind of presence looks like in a heart where God has worked faith. Naomi had lost her husband and both of her sons, and she urged her widowed daughters-in-law to go back to their own families. One of them did. “But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.’” (Ruth 1:16, NIV). Ruth stayed with a grieving woman, and she confessed Naomi’s God as her own. That same God later placed Ruth in the family line of Jesus Christ.

Presence like this does not grow from a resolution. It grows as the Spirit keeps turning our eyes to the Savior who stayed for us. Two small habits can help. When we sit down in the pew before the service begins, or before we walk into a hospital room or a funeral home, we can pray one short sentence: Lord, let me be here. And after the crowd has gone home, we can go back. A call or a visit two weeks after a funeral, when the meals have stopped arriving and most people have returned to their routines, often means more than anything said on the day itself. Some of us have been on the receiving end of a visit like that, and we still remember who came.

Jesus Christ is the reason we can walk into those rooms at all. He asked his friends for one hour, and when they could not give it, he gave everything. He lived for us, kept watch for us, carried the sins of the whole world to the cross, and rose from the dead. Before he ascended, he made his disciples a promise that still holds for us. “and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20, NIV). Jesus Christ has never once checked the clock on us. Because he is always here, the Spirit frees us to be fully here for someone else.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for staying awake on the night your friends could not, and for going to the cross for them and for me. I confess that I have often been in the room while my mind was somewhere else, more concerned with my own comfort than with your Word or with the person you placed in front of me. Forgive me, and thank you that you have never once been absent from me or impatient with me.

Thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit, who works through your Word to make me more like you. Give me patience to hear your Word and to serve you, no matter the time it costs. Teach me to slow down, to listen, and to stay. When I walk into a room where someone is hurting, let me be fully there. Remind me to go back after the crowd has gone home, and let my presence point others to you, who are with your people always. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Thank you for reading this morning. May the Lord give you an unhurried hour with someone who needs it today. In the next devotion we will look at why we were never meant to walk through hard seasons alone, and why the body of Christ needs every one of its members.

To God be the glory.

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.

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