Sit here until I have prayed...

Mark 14:32,33
Then they came to a place named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” And He took with Him Peter and James and John and began to be very distressed and troubled.

After His last supper with His disciples, when the prayers and songs of the Passover meal were completed, Jesus left the city of Jerusalem and walked with the disciples to the west, about half a mile to Gethsemane, a garden of olive trees with an olive press (gath-press, shemen-olive).

 
The location was across the ravine (“winter-flow”) of the Kidron, a wadi that filled with a torrent of water during the latter rains of the rainy season. Its rocky bed was likely dry or had diminished to a trickle by the time of Passover.

It was late at night. The garden was deserted. Anyone who was staying there during the festival of Unleavened Bread was likely asleep. It was dark under the cover of great olive trees, many of which had been there for centuries.  And as His disciples nodded off, perhaps thinking that this was their camp site for the night, Jesus was increasingly alone.

 
Mark says that Jesus was distressed, (amazed, greatly wondering, alarmed) and troubled (heavy, uncomfortable, “not at home;” the strongest of three Greek words for depressed). Knowing what was ahead, He was in a very different place emotionally than His closest friends and companions. They were oblivious.

 
It all weighed heavily on Jesus’ soul. There was the grief of saying good-bye to friends who didn’t know they might not see Him again. There was the weight of being betrayed by a disciple who at best misunderstood what Jesus was trying to accomplish; one who thought his own approach would be better than his Master’s. At worst, Jesus saw the presence of the Evil one in Judas, a friend with whom had just shared a meal.

 
He also anticipated that His disciples would desert Him: “You will all fall away,” Jesus had said to them (Mark 14:27). Peter’s bold and blustery denial would come back to haunt him. Three times. And this was the one Jesus was counting on to lead the disciples after His departure (Mark 14:30). Jesus felt that too.

 
We see the gathering darkness of our world. A day doesn’t pass that current events don’t amaze and alarm us. With the loss of work for many among us and the impending threat of much more, we bear the heaviness of our times.

But we take comfort in following our Savior who was forsaken of men, a man of sorrows, one well acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3).