Jesus observes the sacred holiday of Passover with His Apostles. He institutes the sacred ordinance of the sacrament, in which His disciples are invited to eat and drink in remembrance of Him. He teaches them of the comforting power of the Holy Ghost. And, knowing that His time with them will soon end, He tells them He loves them. His Apostles have come such a long way since they first encountered Jesus, and yet His words show that He knows their transformation into true disciples is just beginning.
After what is often referred to as the Last Supper, Jesus bids His Apostles to follow Him through the night to a quiet garden named Gethsemane. Despite their Master asking them to stay awake with Him, the exhausted disciples fall asleep. Alone, Jesus begins to pray and is soon overcome with an incomprehensible agony. There in the Garden, He begins the process of taking upon Himself the sins of the world. It is the beginning of an act of sacrifice that will reach its ultimate conclusion the next day on the cross at Golgotha.
The pain Jesus feels is all-encompassing. And yet it is dwarfed by the vastness of His love. For His Father. For His disciples. For us. For you. As the Apostles sleep, Jesus Christ makes it possible for them to find a new kind of rest for their souls. Because of Him, they can leave their past mistakes behind and grow into the disciples God always meant for them to become.
It’s never too late to change. Jesus’s sacrifice means that you can leave your past behind.
Jesus doesn’t expect us to achieve perfection in this life, but He does want to help us improve bit by bit, day by day. Take a moment right now to write down something in your life that you want to change.