Chuck Swindoll Daily Devotional 31 March 2025, Insight For Today

Chuck Swindoll Daily Devotional 31 March 2025, Insight For Today

TOPIC: Anguish in the Garden

SCRIPTURE: Mark 14:27–28

Jesus told them, “All of you will desert me. For the Scriptures say, ‘God will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ But after I am raised from the dead, I will go ahead of you to Galilee and meet you there.” —Mark 14:27-28 (NLT)

Judging from the ancient olive grove that can be seen today on the Mount of Olives, the garden of Gethsemane must have been a quiet, fragrant, and lovely place. Scholars of the New Testament believe Jesus and His disciples must have arrived there somewhere between midnight and one o’clock in the morning. Jesus asked His men to sit and wait while He prayed. Apparently, they were to be some kind of human shield, guarding the site, lest someone interrupt His time of solitude. He did, however, take three of the group deeper into the garden with Him.

Mark, the writer of the earliest gospel, got his information about this night directly from Peter, an eyewitness to Jesus’ “very distressed,” anguishing sense of awe as He faced what lay ahead.

What does it mean to be deeply grieved? Think back a moment to a time in your own life that might be described in those terms. Maybe it happened when you lost your closest friend. Nowhere else in the gospel narrative can we enter as fully into the humanity of Christ as in Gethsemane.

Jesus didn’t hide His anguish from His closest followers. He brought them face to face with His every human emotion. By doing so, He freed them from all temptation to deny such agonizing feelings in years to come. Even in His torturous struggles, He modeled a realistic, authentic example of living truthfully.

King of my life, I crown Thee now.

Thine shall the glory be;

Lest I forget Thy thorn-crowned brow,

Lead me to Calvary.

Lest I forget Gethsemane;

Lest I forget Thine agony,

Lest I forget Thy love for me,

Lead me to Calvary.

—JENNIE EVELYN HUSSEY, 1921