Morning, Zane.
Thanks for the text message update on you status—with news of your landing a new job with that timber/logging company. Great. Hope that goes well for you.
With rain falling out there, I’m not yet sure which way to jump first. Once I clear away some preliminaries, like this devo, and maybe an old man jog, I’ll just go out and start jumping…and see what happens. To be sure, nothing out there is silent. Everything I look at is hollering for my attention. I guess I’ll just do what I can…and not worry too much about what I can’t.
We’ll be in touch. Blessings on your day. Love and prayers—Tua/Ray.
These are the anguished words of Jesus to His three inner-circle disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane. We could never face the same set of circumstances as the one Jesus faces here. We can only imagine what He must have been feeling in His humanity in anticipation of His divinely pre-ordained time of torment, and death, while being weighted down with the sins of the entire human race. Nevertheless, you can be sure that, at some point in your future, you too will face very difficult circumstances that will also make you feel “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” I believe this is an inescapable feature of our humanity in the context of a fallen world.
When I was a young schoolboy, I remember our teachers leading the class in occasional “fire drills” where we would practice how we would conduct ourselves in the event that a fire were to break out in the school. There was a point of wisdom to that, even though it was most likely that a fire would never happen. But just in case, we were ready.
How many people practice “crisis drills” where they establish for themselves specific plans and procedures to prepare for meeting times of crisis?—those deep, dark, difficult times of feeling “overwhelmed with sorrow.” That strikes me as wisdom too. For it is not a matter of IF such a crisis would come, but WHEN. Such DIFFICULT TIMES WILL COME. Period. Eliphaz recognized, “Man is born to trouble as surely as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7).
In preparing to meet those hard times, Jesus, by His example, sets forth the best standard you could ever find. (1) He sought the strength, support, and guidance of the Father in prayer. (2) He enlisted prayer support from others. While His prayer partners kind of folded on Him in this instance, it remains a good course of action.
PS: The issues that are currently boiling around us are rarely in alignment with objective intelligent reason. The gay, lesbian, and trans-gender agendas do not make objective sense. The legalized killing of people (baby humans) in the name of women’s rights while making heavy laws to preserve the lives of animals and plants presents a bizarre moral contradiction. And Marxist socialism does not make a lick of sense primarily because it has never worked!—yet that is exactly where our nation is fast heading.
In this reading Jesus presents a statement of valid reasoning at the point of His betrayal and arrest by the mob. He begins with a sound rhetorical question—“Am I leading a rebellion…that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?” He backs up the question with undeniable fact—“Every day I was with you, teaching in the temple courts, and you did not arrest me.” Then He adds a simple statement that convinces me that there is something going on here beyond human thinking and public opinion—in the realm of spiritual forces—“But the Scriptures must be fulfilled.”
Within the permissive will of the Sovereign Lord, the same spiritual forces are in the mix of today’s issues, conflicts, and world events. The Scriptures are being, and will be, fulfilled—right on schedule.