Jesus steps into the Garden, and begins to pray.
Never has He felt so alone. What must be done, only He can do. An angel can’t do it. No angel has the power to break open hell’s gates. A man can’t do it. No man has the purity to destroy sin’s claim. No force on earth can face the force of evil and win – except God.
His humanity begged to be delivered from what His divinity could see. Jesus, the Carpenter, implores. Jesus, the Man, peers into the dark pit and begs, “Can’t there be another way?”
Did He know the answer before He asked the question? Did His human heart hope His heavenly Father had found another way? We don’t know. But we do know He asked to get out. We do know He begged for an exit. We do know there was a time when, if He could have, He would have turned His back on the whole mess and gone away.
But He couldn’t. He couldn’t because He saw you. Right there in the middle of a world that isn’t fair. He saw you betrayed by those you love. He saw you with a body that gets sick and a heart that grows weak. He saw you staring into the pit of your own failures.
He saw you in your Garden of Gethsemane – and He didn’t want you to be alone.
He wanted you to know that He has been there too. He knows what it’s like to be plotted against. He knows what it’s like to be torn between two desires. And, perhaps most of all, He knows what it’s like to beg God to change His mind and to hear God say so gently, but firmly, “No”.
For this is what God says to Jesus. And Jesus accepts the answer. An angel comes over the weary body of the Man in the Garden. As He stands, the anguish is gone from His eyes. His fist will clench no more. His heart will fight no more.
The battle is won. You may have thought it was won on Golgotha. It wasn’t. You may have thought the sign of victory is the empty tomb. It isn’t. The final battle was won in Gethsemane. And the sign of conquest is Jesus at peace in the olive trees.
For it was in the Garden that He made His decision. He would rather go to hell for you than go to heaven without you.