I have just read today's reading in Luke 22: 39-43. Jesus is at a real low, to put it mildly. He is just about to face death; a very humiliating one, and very humiliating awful prolonged questioning and mocking and all the rest of it. Even though it says elsewhere several times that Jesus is choosing this path, in order for the world to be restored, this is the one point where he says "please, Father..... is there any other way..... I don't want to do this, take this huge responsibility off me." He is at breaking point. But then there comes this surrender to the bigger picture: "yet not my will but yours be done". I think at this point he gives God what little he has, even though he feels weak, overwhelmed and alone.
Then I was struck by a new thing I had never noticed before. I have read this passage many times, and sometimes there is this temptation to say, yep I know this story. But then in v 43 it says: "an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him".
How wonderful. That Jesus, in his so very anguished time of wrestling with God, at that point of surrender receives that strength from Heaven.
We are probably never going to be asked to make the same kind of sacrifice that Jesus did, however we are called to a path of surrender and death to ourselves. I am realising in my own life that the call of God, although exhilarating, is a scary and lonely path. But there is strength to received from heaven, at that point of surrender. We are so privileged to be able to receive that also.
Happy Easter one and all.
Hils
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