Are you able?

It is one of those stories in the Bible that make you shake your head and be glad you weren't the one who was caught being so self absorbed.

Jesus is teaching the disciples that he must suffer, die and on the third day rise again.  He says this quite openly.  So James and John step right up and try to reserve a special place for themselves in Jesus' kingdom.

"Let us sit, one on the right and one on the left when you come into your kingdom," they ask Jesus.

Wow!  That takes chutzpah.  Certainly we are amazed at James and John's audacity.  But here the story turns and we might want to pay close attention to this

"Are you able?"  Jesus asks them.  "Are you able to drink the cup that I drink and be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?"

"We are able" they claim.

Little do they know what they are saying.  Little do they know what will come down that road, for Jesus and for them.  What might be an abstract conversation today will become a terrifying reality tomorrow.  The courage of today will fade in the heat of tomorrow's threats.

"Are you able?"

How often I wonder that same thing.  Then I remember that with Christ all things are possible.  It is a test I hope never to confront, and hope even more fervently still, that I will not fail.

Yet even if I do, God loves me.  It is God's love which is steadfast in the face of all my frailty.  For this I can only give thanks.