Jesus said to them [the disciples], “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow, to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me”. Matthew 26:38
James Cracknell, Olympic rower and “iron man” supreme, suffered a brain injury which seriously changed his personality. His wife Beverley found life with her “new” husband intolerable, and, offering advice to others in a similar situation, encouraged them to look for help wherever they could find it: “Even if the situation is ultimately hopeless, it helps if you aren’t carrying the burden alone.”
It helps if you aren’t carrying the burden alone - or, as somebody else once said, “Anything is bearable - as long as you don’t have to bear it alone.”
I’m very thankful that I have never been in such a desperate situation. But as I watched the suffering of the thousands of people affected by the south-east African cyclone - loved ones lost, homes, crops and livestock washed away, livings destroyed - I could only trust that those people derived some comfort from the fact that they weren’t alone: all around them others were in the same situation; and, hopefully, it wasn’t long before still others arrived with practical help and support.
“Moral support” isn’t just an empty phrase! Which is why “support groups” for people enduring similar trials are so enormously helpful. And why “just being there”, even though it sounds pretty feeble, can be a true life-saver.
Suppose you’ve just had an operation. You come round from the anaesthetic, perhaps groggy and confused, and there is no-one around - all the staff are busy at that moment with other patients. In your helplessness you feel a tremendous sense of aloneness in this unfamiliar place, with its bleeping monitors and tubes and bottles and other bits of slightly alarming equipment.
But suppose that on opening your eyes the first thing you see is a familiar, friendly face sitting by your bed? You immediately feel comforted - I’m not forgotten! I’m not alone!
Thinking along those lines makes Jesus’ suffering before the crucifixion even more acute. His words to his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane are really quite pitiful: “Stay here and keep watch with me...” In other words, “I need you now more than I have ever needed you before. I know there is nothing you can do to make this cup of suffering more drinkable, but... be there for me. I want to be able to look up from my praying and see that you are with me...”
And what did he find? They were fast asleep.
The first time it happened he took Simon Peter to task: “Couldn’t you keep watch with me for just one hour?” But the second time Matthew tells us simply that “he left them and went away once more and prayed...” As if to say, “There’s no point in disturbing them again - the fact is that I’m not going to get any support from them in my time of struggle.” So “he left them and went away...”
Can you see him: his head bowed, his shoulders drooping, all the body-language of agonizing disappointment? He prays on, completely alone.
And it was to get even worse. Being let down by your friends is bad enough. But what was it Jesus cried out on the cross? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Throughout eternity Jesus had been in intimate relationship with his heavenly Father. But as death approached that relationship was broken. This is an aloneness we can only begin to imagine. But it is the price that had to be paid for our sins. The perfect holiness of God on the one hand, and the heavy weight of human sin on the other, cannot co-exist, so a great wedge is driven between God the Father and God the Son.
Easter weekend is very close. Why not pray that God would give you a fresh appreciation of what Jesus suffered? An old hymn asks the question, “Died he for me, who caused his pain, for me who him to death pursued?” And the answer is... Yes. Yes, really for you!
But... All right, I believe it. But how little I feel it!
Let’s pray too to be the kind of friends that others can rely on when they are passing through their Gethsemane-times. May these beautiful words by Richard Gillard reflect our sincere intention:
I will hold the Christ-light for you/ In the night-time of your fear;/ I will hold my hand out to you,/ Speak the peace you long to hear./ I will weep when you are weeping,/ When you laugh I’ll laugh with you;/ I will share your joy and sorrow/ Till we’ve seen this journey through.
Lord God, I have known so long the story of Jesus in the garden, and Jesus on the cross, that it no longer moves me as once it did. Please refresh my vision of what happened at that terrible but wonderful time so that my love will be stirred and refreshed. Amen.
James Cracknell, Olympic rower and “iron man” supreme, suffered a brain injury which seriously changed his personality. His wife Beverley found life with her “new” husband intolerable, and, offering advice to others in a similar situation, encouraged them to look for help wherever they could find it: “Even if the situation is ultimately hopeless, it helps if you aren’t carrying the burden alone.”
It helps if you aren’t carrying the burden alone - or, as somebody else once said, “Anything is bearable - as long as you don’t have to bear it alone.”
I’m very thankful that I have never been in such a desperate situation. But as I watched the suffering of the thousands of people affected by the south-east African cyclone - loved ones lost, homes, crops and livestock washed away, livings destroyed - I could only trust that those people derived some comfort from the fact that they weren’t alone: all around them others were in the same situation; and, hopefully, it wasn’t long before still others arrived with practical help and support.
“Moral support” isn’t just an empty phrase! Which is why “support groups” for people enduring similar trials are so enormously helpful. And why “just being there”, even though it sounds pretty feeble, can be a true life-saver.
Suppose you’ve just had an operation. You come round from the anaesthetic, perhaps groggy and confused, and there is no-one around - all the staff are busy at that moment with other patients. In your helplessness you feel a tremendous sense of aloneness in this unfamiliar place, with its bleeping monitors and tubes and bottles and other bits of slightly alarming equipment.
But suppose that on opening your eyes the first thing you see is a familiar, friendly face sitting by your bed? You immediately feel comforted - I’m not forgotten! I’m not alone!
Thinking along those lines makes Jesus’ suffering before the crucifixion even more acute. His words to his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane are really quite pitiful: “Stay here and keep watch with me...” In other words, “I need you now more than I have ever needed you before. I know there is nothing you can do to make this cup of suffering more drinkable, but... be there for me. I want to be able to look up from my praying and see that you are with me...”
And what did he find? They were fast asleep.
The first time it happened he took Simon Peter to task: “Couldn’t you keep watch with me for just one hour?” But the second time Matthew tells us simply that “he left them and went away once more and prayed...” As if to say, “There’s no point in disturbing them again - the fact is that I’m not going to get any support from them in my time of struggle.” So “he left them and went away...”
Can you see him: his head bowed, his shoulders drooping, all the body-language of agonizing disappointment? He prays on, completely alone.
And it was to get even worse. Being let down by your friends is bad enough. But what was it Jesus cried out on the cross? “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Throughout eternity Jesus had been in intimate relationship with his heavenly Father. But as death approached that relationship was broken. This is an aloneness we can only begin to imagine. But it is the price that had to be paid for our sins. The perfect holiness of God on the one hand, and the heavy weight of human sin on the other, cannot co-exist, so a great wedge is driven between God the Father and God the Son.
Easter weekend is very close. Why not pray that God would give you a fresh appreciation of what Jesus suffered? An old hymn asks the question, “Died he for me, who caused his pain, for me who him to death pursued?” And the answer is... Yes. Yes, really for you!
But... All right, I believe it. But how little I feel it!
Let’s pray too to be the kind of friends that others can rely on when they are passing through their Gethsemane-times. May these beautiful words by Richard Gillard reflect our sincere intention:
I will hold the Christ-light for you/ In the night-time of your fear;/ I will hold my hand out to you,/ Speak the peace you long to hear./ I will weep when you are weeping,/ When you laugh I’ll laugh with you;/ I will share your joy and sorrow/ Till we’ve seen this journey through.
Lord God, I have known so long the story of Jesus in the garden, and Jesus on the cross, that it no longer moves me as once it did. Please refresh my vision of what happened at that terrible but wonderful time so that my love will be stirred and refreshed. Amen.
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