Final Peace for Failing Followers

"Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me” (John 16:32). As John wrote these words as an eyewitness some decades later, the scene would playback for him like a final recorded voicemail from long ago. It’s a haunting message. It comes the night Jesus was killed. Jesus gives a final sobering prediction about the failure of his friends. Yet it’s also a hopeful message. Their failure will not be final, because his death will not be final.