Maundy Thursday - How am I going to get through this?Pete Greig - 1 Apr 2010

Over the next few days as we journey through Easter week we are taking time to consider the path of Jesus. God on Mute, the book by Pete Greig (one of the founders of 24-7 Prayer), is structured along that path and so we will be posting extracts from the book to help us engage with and consider the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Maundy Thursday - How am I going to get through this?

Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. (Mark 14:36)

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is wrestling for His life, in prayer. The location is significant: “Gethsemane” literally means “The Oil Press” and for Jesus it has become a place of intense pressure – spiritually, emotionally and physically. When life threatens to crush us, we too may wrestle in prayer. If God is our loving Abba, Father, for whom everything is possible, why – we may wonder – does He not just remove the cup of our suffering? Does He really care? Is He really there? I don’t know the shape of your unanswered prayers – we each arrive in Gethsemane by different paths – but here’s how it happened to me…

…It is a terror to wake in the night to see the face you love more than any other leering demonically. The image stains your memory like the Shroud of Turin, and it doesn’t fade. By now Samie’s eyes – those beautiful summer blue eyes- had turned to moons of white and her whole body seemed to be shaking. I hoped she was unconscious, but then with super human effort she forced out a single, desperate word: “P-p-p-pray.”

And so I did, I prayed like I’d never prayed before, helplessly convinced that I was watching my wife die. I begged God to make the convulsions stop so that she could at least draw breath. I prayed in the name of Jesus. I tried to have faith. I invoked the power of His blood. I rebuked and renounced everything I could think of rebuking and renouncing. This was not a prayer for a parking space or a sunny day. This seemed to me to be a matter of life and death. Samie was turning blue, and bloodied spittle was blotting the pillow. The ambulance was taking forever. My prayers weren’t working…

...As Jesus prays in Gethsemane, we are granted one of the most moving insights into the intimacy of His relationship with the one who sent Him. All three synoptic Gospels record that in His darkest hour, Jesus addressed His prayers to the “Father”.

However, Marks Gospel reveals, more particularly, that Jesus used the same word to address His Father as [a] child crying in the playground… : The intimate Aramaic word “Abba”. Here we see one of the rare occasions in which Mark, almost certainly writing his Gospel in Greek, chooses to use a word in the original language spoken by Jesus in order to drive home a point. He wants us to catch a glimpse of the extraordinary intimacy and humanity of Christ’s interaction with the Almighty. This is the only time in the whole Bible in which Jesus addresses Yaheweh as “Abba” and He is doing it at the time of His greatest vulnerability. It might well have been the very first word spoken by the Word incarnate – and now it would also be one of His last: “Abba.”...

Prayer

Abba, Father, I know all this stuff about Your love in my head, but my heart gets hard to it and I'm tired. Please do whatever You've got to do (and I mean whatever) to unclench my fists. Pry open my eyes so that I can see Your tears and soften my heart so that it moves me deeply. I don't understand why You don't just answer my prayers, but I do choose to trust that You have heard me, that You actually do care and that You're somewhere out there on my case.

Abba, Father, thank you for all the ways You have blessed me. I honestly don't know what I'd do, where I'd be or even who I'd become without You. Abba, Father I am going to try to trust You today.

Amen

Taken from God on Mute by Pete Greig. Used by permission of Kingsway Publications.  Purchase your copy in the 24-7 Shop.