Lent Guide: In the Shadow of Gethsemaneಮಾದರಿ

Stroke my heart

And he became deeply troubled and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” He went on a little farther and fell to the ground. He prayed that, if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by. “Abba, Father,” he cried out, “everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” Mark 14:33b – 36 (NLT)

Jesus knows what is coming. His hour draws near. He lives with a consciousness that his suffering will increase and that his death is approaching. Maybe he had experienced some negative emotions up to this point, but now there is an urgent, overwhelming face-up-to-it impetuousness in his heart. It’s an incredibly emotional experience. He doesn’t deny it. He doesn’t minimise it. He doesn’t try to escape it. He goes to a place where he can sit with it and really feel it. Here, he can put His pain into words in the safe space of a conversation with God.

We often want to deny or escape or do anything really to avoid sitting and facing the thing that causes our heart’s pain. Especially when our hearts are in such a chokehold of anxiety that we actually can’t even feel anymore, it takes great courage and vulnerability to go and sit in Gethsemane and feel what you’re feeling.

Maybe the invitation is to create a place of prayer for the next 40 days. A place where you can feel those things you have hidden away somewhere, to realise that there’s something there and to ask: “God, reach out and touch me… stroke my heart.”

Exercise

• Wait until dark and go sit in your place of prayer.
• How does it feel to know that Jesus sits with you and observes you? He watches you. He senses your emotions. He knows your heart.
• Ask him for the courage, both now and for the rest of the journey ahead, to stay connected with how you feel and raise it in conversation with Him.

Prayer: I ask for a deep consciousness of Your love and work in my life.