Can you imagine how Jesus felt on the night before He was crucified?

When He requested that His inner circle of intercessors consisting of Peter, James and John watch and pray with Him in the garden of Gethsemane, neither did they watch nor did they pray. Jesus says: “Can you not watch with me for one hour?” (Matthew 26:40). Do you sense the hurt of disappointment in those words?

When Judas identified Jesus as the one the soldiers needed to arrest, Jesus says to him: “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48). Can you hear the hurt of betrayal behind those poignant words?

When all His disciples ran for their lives and two-thirds of His leaders’ cell deserted Him, can you feel the pain of abandonment in Jesus’ heart?

When Peter denied Him three times just as He had foretold, Jesus did not have to say a word. He simply turned around and looked at him. Their eyes locked for a moment. Peter wept like a baby. Can you experience the hurt that Jesus must have felt in that fleeting glance?

Did Jesus not know when he handpicked The Twelve that this could happen? If so, why did He still go ahead and choose them? Was He not setting Himself up to get hurt down the road?

Could it be because He had already seen the same pattern in the up-and-down relationship between His Father and the fickle flock known as the “children of Israel?”

They had a solid reputation and an unenviable track record for hurting the One who chose them to be His own, did they not?

Yet, the Father kept on giving them second and third and four hundred and ninety first chances to keep on hurting Him one more time.

Perhaps this is where Jesus learned that whenever you love someone, you are taking a chance that the one you love will end up hurting you somewhere along the way.

Since He is the visible image of the invisible Father, how could He do anything but follow suit?

Dear DWOD friend, one of the painful lessons that all of us learn on the road to reaching our destiny is that we will be hurt by others along the way.

We can expect every hurt that Jesus experienced to happen to us as well.

We too will face the hurt of disappointment caused by those in whom we had invested our lives.

No leader is immune from the hurt of betrayal.

We are very likely to experience the hurt of being abandoned by our friends in the hour of our greatest need.

We too are candidates to be hurt by those who promised to be with us till the bitter end (as Peter did to Jesus).

That is the price we are called to pay when we choose to love.

Sadly, not all are willing to pay this price. You probably know someone who has sworn that they will never love again, because they do not want to take the chance of getting hurt again. Perhaps you are that “someone.”

This is in no way intended to minimize that hurt or make light of it. Trust me, I have experienced every one of these hurts multiple times in nearly 31 years of ordained ministry.

As Jesus said Himself: “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20) Can we expect anything less than to be hurt along the way?

To ask: “Are you willing to love?” and “Are you willing to get hurt?” is to ask the same question twice. You simply can’t have one without the other! That’s the bad news.

Yet, like Jesus, you too can go forward and fulfill your destiny despite the hurts. That’s the good news.