Struggles

There were no neat lawns, no formal flower beds in Gethsemane’s garden.  There was olive trees scattered over the hillside – Gethsemane means ‘oil press’ – and straggly grass and dust.  A place of peace and quite away from the city, except when the olives were harvested. I guess Jesus was attracted by the quiet.

It was quiet too I imagine the last time he went there, at night, but the peace had gone. It was a time of tension: Jesus struggling with himself, striving with God.  Somehow, it is easy to get smug, gloss over the struggle and concentrate on Jesus decision.  “Yet not my will but thine be done” (Luke 22: 42).  Nice and easy. “Ah.” we say, “He always did his father’s will.” True, but there was nothing easy about it. Look at the struggle.

It echoes our own struggles.  The constant battle of our will versus God’s.  The fight to go our own way, not His.  We will do anything to avoid it, argue, pretend, and rationalize.  Yet if we were to put less energy into fighting, there would be more left to do the work!  We screw ourselves up so tightly raising objections that we have nothing left over for constructive thought.  But from the cross Jesus offers us a new freedom.  In his powerful book Celebration of Discipline, Robert Foster describes it as “the ability to lay down the terrible burden of always needing to get your own way”. Obedience – a free decision we make towards God – leads to a freedom from self.  Something worth fighting for.

And when you look at it more closely, the struggle is not really against God, but against self, and God is actually fighting on our side, if only we let Him.