Gethsemane

As we get ready to enter Holy Week, I am reprinting a poem that I wrote many years ago. It isn’t great poetry, but it responds to the uncertainty I was going through at the time and that we all experience now and then.

Gethsemane

I often wonder if God understands

When I feel deserted and all alone;

Then I remember three sleeping men

As Jesus knelt on the garden’s stone.

Or does God understand my anguish

When from life’s cares I want relief?

“Let this cup pass” were my Savior’s words

As He voiced His anguish and His grief.

Sometimes it’s hard to follow God’s will

When He asks for a sacrifice from me;

Yet Christ was giving so much more

When He followed God’s will to Calvary.

Whenever I wonder if God understands,

I remember Christ’s love for me;

How, because of that love, He has felt what I feel,

As He had His own Gethsemane.

As Hebrews 5:17-18 says, “For we do not have a high priest [Jesus] who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (NIV)

Thanks be to God.

__________

The picture shows the Garden of Gethsemane as it looked in 1998 when Roland, the children, and I took a trip to the Middle East with my mother, my brothers, my niece, and my nephew. The photo is © 1998 by Roland E. Camp and the poem is © 1974 by Kathryn Page (Camp).