"Watch with Me" - with no private point of view of your own at all, but watch entirely with Me.

In the early stages we do not watch with Jesus, we watch for Him.

We do not watch with Him through the revelation of the Bible; in the circumstances of our lives.

Our Lord is trying to introduce us to identification with Himself in a particular Gethsemane, and we will not go; we say - "No, Lord, I cannot see the meaning of this, it is bitter."

How can we possibly watch with Someone Who is inscrutable?

How are we going to understand Jesus sufficiently to watch with Him in His Gethsemane, when we do not know even what His suffering is for?

We do not know how to watch with Him; we are only used to the idea of Jesus watching with us.

The disciples loved Jesus Christ to the limit of their natural capacity, but they did not understand what He was after.

In the Garden of Gethsemane they slept for their own sorrow, and at the end of three years of the closest intimacy they "all forsook Him and fled."

"They were all filled with the Holy Ghost" - the same "they," but something wonderful has happened in between - Our Lord's Death and Resurrection and Ascension; and the disciples have been invaded by the Holy Spirit.

Our Lord had said - "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you," and this meant that they learned to watch with Him all the rest of their lives.

When He needed God most in the greatest crisis of His life, Jesus sought a garden. Under the olive trees, with the Passover moon shining down upon Him, He prayed in agony for strength to do God’s will. Only those who have been through such agony can realize even in part what that bleak hour of renunciation, for the sake of you and me, meant to Christ.

Are we willing that He should suffer Gethsemane and the Cross for us in vain?

“I go to pray,” He said to the eight, “Rest here at the gate.”

But He spake to the three entreatingly, “Will you watch with me as I pray A stone’s throw away? I suffer tonight exceedingly.”

The eight slept well at the garden gate (As tired men will); The three tossed fitfully within, (Twice half-roused by His need of them) But they slept— Till the black in the East turned gray, Till their garments were drenched with the tears of the day: Slept Till He called them—each one by his name— The three within, and the eight at the gate.

The ground was hard where the eight had slept (As hard as the road the soldiers stepped); The grass was bent where the three had dreamt, But red where the Lord had wept.

MIRIAM LEFEVRE CROUSE

“Couldn’t you men keep watch with me for one hour?” (Matthew 26:40).