Do you remember a few years ago there was a TV reality game show called "The Mole"? In this show, twelve players as it tries to work out who among it is The Mole -- a saboteur trying to keep the other players from winning money. Contestants have to decide who they think The Mole is through various observations and suspicions made during the show, and then learn as much about him or her as they can. At the end of each one-hour episode a quiz is undertaken by the contestants, and the player who knows the least about The Mole is immediately eliminated from the game.

The 12 disciples were with Jesus at the Last Supper. These were men who followed Jesus closely and (presumably) spent a lot of time together over the previous three years. It's a pretty good guess that these guys all knew each other pretty well, some more than others. From what we read in John 13:21-30, Jesus announces that there is a betrayer - a mole, if you will - in this extended inner circle of his. Peter and John, Jesus' two closest followers, had no idea that a mole was in their midst. John even was afraid that HE could be the mole! (If this were the game show, John and Peter would be the first two to be eliminated. But it's not the game show, and we now know that they were kept on for quite some time.)

What strikes me here about John that I can take for myself is that you can be as close as a brother/sister to someone, even part of their heart, and still know that you have the capability of causing irreparable hurt to him/her. None of us, no matter how much we love someone, is above that. Sounds hard, but it is a harsh truth. I pray that none of us ever give Satan an opportunity to enter into us to cause us to hurt a loved one.

Luke 22:1-6