Solidarity in the Suffering

| Mark 14:36 |

 

Abba, Father.

Everything is possible for You.

Take this cup from me. 

 

He didn’t want it.

He wanted anything but the suffering to come.

 

Who would?

Who wants the heartbreak, the agony, the unanswered prayers, the doubt and desperation?

Who would want to stay in pain?

And how could anyone be satisfied with the saying there is purpose in pain?

Easy for someone to spout off when they aren’t in the throes of torment.

 

Even still, Jesus said, “Yet not what I will, but what You will.”

 

What kind of love and surrender causes this response? What kind of strength to sustain all to come?

 

Hosanna – save us.

Blessed – in the burden of pain and punishment – is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

 

We don’t want what’s been poured for us, either.

The pain, the feelings of not being understood, the grief and sorrow that seeps in our bones. We long for life, for light.

 

But it is in Christ’s sufferings I identify, and his honesty about his plea for the easy way, the relief of pain that endears his humanity to my heart.

 

“Take this cup from me.”

 

But this cup was the only way. The only solution to a saga of sin started from the beginning of time. And Jesus drank. He drank it for us, so in our pain and endless nights, we didn’t have to be alone.

 

We don’t have to be alone in our suffering. He’s there in agony with us. Being honest with the Father, crying out, crying with tears and blood and calling for another way.

 

He is the way, and he wanted us to know it.

 

“Yet not what I will, but what You will.”

 

Here is the will that made a way, when there was no other way.

 

Christ suffered. Christ longed for something different than what he had to do. And he endured, drank the dregs of death. Every last drop.

 

This man of sorrows suffers with us. He felt pain, fear, betrayal, loneliness, so we could look in his eyes in our own agony and see compassion, understanding, solidarity in the suffering with us. So he could see us through to what is coming.

 

He made a way, brought purpose from his pain.

His pain made a way for ours.

 

Abba, Father.

Everything is possible for You.

Take this cup from me. 

Yet not what I will, but what You will.

 

Everything is possible. Because of his pain.

 

Hosanna – save us.

Blessed is he – beautiful in obedience and love – is he who comes in the name of the Lord.