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Protect Them


  I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name—the name you gave me—so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. (John 17:11-15) 

          Did you notice what Jesus didn’t pray for in this passage? He didn’t pray that God would make everything all better for everyone. He didn’t pray that God would heal everyone, or that He would make heaven on earth. He didn’t pray for victory for His children. He didn’t pray that his disciples would be perfect, shining examples of a Christianity devoid of any of their human frailty (AKA: sinfulness.)
          These are things I think I would have preferred that Jesus had prayed. When troubles come, I want a Knight In Shining Armor to ride in on a heavenly destrier, defeat my enemies and set me up in a palace, then ride off into the sunset until I next need help. I want Him to dig a moat around it and add a drawbridge so that only those I want can get in. I want to be protected from heartache, struggle, pain, and hatred, to live separate and untouched by the world. That would be loverly, but that’s not what Jesus thought important. 
          Instead, Jesus acknowledges that the world hates us. It’s going to hate us. That wouldn’t mean anything if their hatred could not touch us. Jesus prays that God will protect us from the evil one (or, according to Matthew Poole’s commentary, the evil thing.) What does that mean? What is the evil one or the evil thing? The most obvious answer is Satan, and by extension, his minions, but is it just them? Or do we further extend it to include the world system they helped develop. Does it, in short, mean not only the devil, but the world and the flesh as well? 
          Isn’t that my palace and moat? If I’m to be protected, why is my life filled with hardship and pain (and why are the lives of other Christians far harder than mine?) Job, Joseph, Moses, Daniel and even Jesus are proof that God doesn’t protect the way I want to be protected. Jesus says He doesn’t want us taken out of the world. He seems to ask for more of a protection through than a protection from. 
          Do you know what protection through instead of from produces? Stronger, more capable, more enduring love; strength of will; courage, nobility, grace, endurance, realness… taking us out of the world would not only harm us, it would harm the world.

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