The Garden

Tonight at my church’s Wednesday evening service, we began a series to prepare our hearts during this time before Easter by looking at the Stations of the Cross.  The first station was “The Garden” and we looked at the passage in Matthew Chapter 26 where Jesus prayed in anguish for strength to follow God’s will which Jesus knew involved the great distress of the cross.

When we read the passage a couple of things stood out to me.  The first revelation that I had was that Jesus was a great servant leader and He had shown Himself to be powerful and trustworthy to His followers, yet in His crucial hour where He specifically asked them to do something to support Him, vulnerably expressing to them His feelings of being overwhelmed and filled with sorrow, they could not follow Him and pray as He specifically requested.  The request came from the vocal chords of the Son of God and rested upon their human ears.  There was no confusion regarding His will, yet He was ignored.

As a frustrated leader, I was encouraged to know that Jesus, the greatest spiritual model and leader of all time, was ignored by His followers.  They failed to provide support to Him in His hour of need and yet Jesus rose and followed the will of God, relying upon the strength He received from God.  Jesus fully submitted Himself with abandon to do the will of God despite His circumstances and disappointments.  Not only did Jesus not receive the prayer support from His followers, but after praying, He had to face His betrayer and endure Judas’ kiss. 

My second thought was in regarding to the failure of the disciples to discern the grievousness of the time.  They missed the importance of the hour and in their human weakness fell asleep…not once, but twice.  They missed the opportunity to pray for strength for the Savior of their souls and to receive strength in the time of their greatest temptation.  They missed the opportunity to encourage Jesus in the time of His great sorrow….that is a great loss.

I am amazed at the love and graciousness of Jesus that He would return to this ragtag group of followers after His resurrection.  I would be looking for a new group.  The more I follow Christ, the more aware I am that I fall short of His glory in the way I love others.  I pray that I would be more discerning when it comes to being aware of the times and sacred opportunities and that I would be more gracious to the shortcomings of other followers.

 

Genetic Modification

 

Today is the first day of Lent, a sacred time of drawing close to God, reflecting on Christ’s suffering, sacrifice and death on the cross and culminating with a celebration of Christ’s resurrection.  Many people will be giving up indulgences as an act of self-denial attempting to tame the rebel will as part of their sacred journey.   It’s a time where we practice dying and this is good.

In John 12:23-27, Jesus begins to prepare His disciples for what is going to lie ahead.  He tells them that it is time for Him to be glorified.  He describes the glorification process as one that is like a kernel of wheat that has to die in order to produce a great yield.  Despite the severity of the situation, Jesus knows that death is essential for glorification.

We don’t like to think about death, it is not a rapturous topic of conversation, but as Christians, unless we think about death, not just in the physical sense, but in the spiritual sense, as well; we cannot produce fruit.  Jesus teaches that unless a kernel of wheat falls in the ground “and dies”; it remains only a single seed.  We would rather be more like a genetically modified kernel of wheat that is taken into a laboratory and pampered to produce a higher yield than to fall into the darkness of the ground and have to die.  The laboratory does indeed produce great quantity, but death produces something organic—something real, not artificial.

When I live my life with little regard to myself…hating my life, so to speak, valuing eternal/heavenly interests above those of my own little world and place little importance on the things the world values, then I have begun the art of dying.  I have begun the act of following Christ who chose death despite his troubled heart.

There will be times when doing the right thing, the thing that requires my own personal sacrifice, may be troubling; but in these times, I am identifying with Christ.  I am taking up my cross and following  after Him and in all this dying, there is the hope of glorification.  We bring glory to God—you can’t manufacture that in the safety of a laboratory.

Lord, when our hearts are troubled, when we struggle to "hate" our lives and cling to the things the world loves....comfort and safety, remind us that You also were troubled and bringing glory to God by dying to ourselves is of great eternal value.