At the last supper table, Jesus turns to His most confident disciple: Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.

Before the failure, the intercession; after the failure, an assignment. That is how Jesus handles His people. It is how He handles you.

Judges shows what happens when memory dies: one unrehearsed generation, and Israel is serving Baals. Jesus at the table builds the counter-measure into His church, a meal that rehearses the covenant, body given, blood poured, do this in remembrance, so forgetting never gets a full generation's head start.

And to every Simon at the table, confident tonight, sifted by morning, He gives the two-part mercy: I have prayed for you, and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers. Your failures were interceded for before they happened, and they end in assignments, not exile. Take the bread, take the cup, and take heart.