When Are You Going To Wake Up?

A preacher was once asked by a group preparing for a potential disaster, “How many people could the church sleep?” He responded, “About half of them on a typical Sunday morning.”   Jesus would have understood the sentiment in that joke.

You see, Peter, James and John had a bad habit of falling asleep during important events. Often times Jesus would take them to special events (Matthew 17:1, Mark 5:37) and more than once they fell asleep (Luke 9:32, Matthew 26:40). After the second time he woke them up in Gethsemane scripture says “And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him. -Mark 14:40.” They couldn’t respond because their sleep had made them to miss out on the distress that Jesus was praying about in the garden.

You can miss a lot when you are asleep. Some people sleep through life. They are there but not conscience of what is going on. When they do wake up, they respond like the apostles. They don’t know what to say or say the wrong things (Luke 9:33). It’s important to stay awake, lest we miss out on something important. As  1st Thessalonians 5:6 admonishes us, “so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.”