Aren’t we always feeling this wrestling as children of God who are not yet united with Him? Won’t there always be a sense of “already but not yet” on this side of eternity?
Confession: this is not the story I dreamed of. You probably already knew that. I daresay, at times, this is not the story I want. And yet, I try not to discount what God is doing or what He has given me. I had different dreams. A different plan. But it is the Lord who orders our steps, and every good and perfect gift comes from Him.
I do not wish to despise the life He has crafted for me. I want to be grateful, even in the struggle. And this is what keeps me coming back to the Bible. Over and over again, these words sustain, encourage, and breathe life into my weary soul.
There is comfort in the words of David, who wrestled with his own emotions. The honesty presented in the Psalms and the fact that David always came back to the faithfulness of God allows us to do the same.
Then we get to the New Testament, meet Jesus, and learn that truly nothing is impossible with God. Miracle after miracle proves that God’s love and His pursuit of humanity at any cost is still at play today.
There’s a stark difference between reading the words on the pages of Scripture and experiencing circumstances that necessitate a miracle.
But there’s a stark difference between reading the words on the pages of Scripture and experiencing the circumstances that necessitate a miracle.
Hebrews 4:15 tells us that “…we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.”
It’s easy to dismiss Jesus’ time on earth as wholly divine – He is the Son of God, after all. But this passage reminds us that while He was here, He was fully man, able to understand and sympathize with our struggle.
Ecclesiastes tells us that there is nothing new under the sun. It’s not as though Jesus’ first century struggles were – at their core – any different than our twenty-first century issues. Aren’t we all still after the same things? To have our physical, emotional, and spiritual needs met? Jesus understands that.
Jesus endured when He wanted to quit.
Jesus wept when He was sad.
Jesus felt hunger when He was fasting. He had needs, and scripture shows us how meeting those very human needs actually strengthened His mission.
It’s easy to dismiss Jesus’ time on earth as wholly divine. But while He was here, He was also fully man. He knows our weakness because He experienced it.
He felt thirst and exhaustion that led Him to Jacob’s well where He encountered the Samaritan woman. And this opened an entire people group up to the truth of the gospel – a people who would never have heard it (since Jews did not interact with Samaritans) if the human need for water and rest had not led Jesus to sit while His disciples went to look for food.
So I’m comforted to know that Jesus – the very core of my Christian faith – struggled with His humanity.
In fact, it’s possible that Jesus’ divinity actually complicated His human experience rather than alleviating it, as we so often think.
See, Jesus didn’t only die for us. He suffered. Scripture says “… for the joy set before him…” Jesus endured the cross and gave no attention to the shame associated with it. God didn’t take away the shame of the cross; Jesus fixed His focus on the joy awaiting Him – not the joy of the moment.
It’s possible that Jesus’ divinity actually complicated His human experience rather than alleviating it, as we often think.
Scripture gives us an insider’s view of how Jesus felt about His impending suffering in Matthew 26:36-29:
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
The juxtaposition of Jesus’ will and God’s will in that last sentence implies that the two were not necessarily the same in this moment. This is significant. It’s one of the only times that we see Jesus’ humanity having the potential to override His divine assignment.
Of course, we know that it didn’t, but there is a glimpse of human frailty in the statement, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
When suffering overwhelms us or we face lengthy seasons of life that we don’t want to have to endure, may we remember:
neither did Jesus.
You provide the end of the sentence for me. You address questions I’ve thought about or didn’t know I was thinking about. Thank you. At Clifton UMC, we encourage children to ask their wondering questions. I decided that meant I could, too. And a lot of these questions were very old. When I grew up, questioning was tantamount to doubting. In my heart, I didn’t think I doubting, but after several rebuffs, several; because I have pit bull qualities when I don’t understand, ask your mother,, I stopped asking. But I didn’t stop wondering.