Fear
Day 447, Saturday, Nov. 1
Matthew Chapter 26 – 27:10
As I’ve watched The Chosen television series about Jesus and his disciples, one of the things that has surprised me about it is how much it emphasizes the fear Jesus must have felt about his upcoming crucifixion.
As we read about the Garden of Gethsemane, it’s all there: his desire for the disciples to be with him, his soul being overwhelmed with sorry, and his plea, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Sometimes it seems we don’t take Jesus’s pain seriously. Out of a misguided understanding of who he was we think that his closeness to the Father must have shielded him from the kind of fears and sorrows and temptations that we feel.
That belief isn’t respect, though. Instead it makes light of the sacrificial gift Jesus gave us.
If anything, his fear of death would have been greater than ours because his closeness to God was greater than ours has ever been. We have always lived our lives with the great gulf of sin separating us from the Father; Jesus had lived in perfect communion with God since before the time of creation. That communion with the Father was about to be broken by death.
Jesus was fully human. He was about to suffer unimaginable physical pain and humiliation.
His plea asking God to take that pain from him was real; he wasn’t just going through the motions as an example for us to follow.
But in spite of his fear and the emotional pain he was going through, he didn’t stop with asking from God to take the ordeal from him. He continued with, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
All of our prayers should be lifted up in that same spirit.

Saturday meditation

Psalms 19:1-6
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth.

Prayer focus
God, not as I will, but as you will.

-Rev. Mark Fleming