"Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!" (Luke 23:46)
"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." (Luke 22:42)
photo: Oklahoma Redbud, Andy Bruner
As I read the Gospel of Luke, the experience of Jesus in the Garden and the experience of Jesus on the Cross are companion pieces.
In both cases, there's the physical agony, the emotional pain of abandonment, the wrestling with God: "Let this cup pass from me" in the Garden and "Why have you forsaken me" on the Cross.
And then, words that trust the Love: "Not my will" and "Into your hands."
Last time, we looked at those beautiful words of the poet Machado, "Wanderer, you make the road by walking," and we thought about how trust may not be something we have until we take the next step.
One of our commenters, Nancy, offered up the wonderful metaphor of breathing, and I love how that relates to trust.
We can't breathe enough in advance to last us a lifetime. It's just breathe, breathe, breathe, all day every day.
We don't condemn ourselves for not having enough breath for tomorrow.
We just know we'll breathe when we get there.
I've been thinking about these words in Hebrews 5:8: "Even though Jesus was God's Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered."
When I look at the Garden and the Cross, it seems to me that even Jesus made the road from Gethsemane to Golgotha to Reunion with God by walking in trust that unfurled one single step at a time.
May this be a word of peace and blessing over each of our roads this Holy Week:
Into your hands.
We trust the Love, one single step at a time.
"All is well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." (Julian of Norwich)