Prayer To Know God's Help As We Journey Through Suffering and Death

Here we are on Wednesday of the week where time seems to turn at a different pace than what is usual.  We have the Friday’s events of Jesus’ suffering and death in our thoughts and yet it seems like such an unbearably long time to have to endure the anticipation of what is to come. 

I don’t know if you have sat beside someone on their deathbed.  You desperately want them to get well and yet you know that doesn’t seem at all likely. You want the person to stay with you and you also want their suffering to be over.   Physically speaking the end is near.  Hospice staff who recognize certain signs give you signals to gather in family who aren’t there if they want to be there at the end.  It’s such a strange time where time seems to stand still and yet at other times hours go by when it seems like only minutes have passed.

On this Wednesday before Good Friday, this is a bit of the experience that speaks to me today.

Jesus has been holding these kinds of thoughts as He has walked on the earth for 33 years.  He’s been telling His friends about it all along and particularly as the time approached.

Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”  Matthew 20:17-19

And now the day is close. Tomorrow night after they eat dinner together, Jesus and his friends will go out to a place called The Mount of Olives to pray and rest and there Jesus will be arrested and this whole horrible torture and murder of the Son of God will take place.

Where Jesus’ death differs from every other death you or I have witnessed is this:

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”  John 10:17-18

None of us have control over the time and nature of our death.  We get old.  We get sick.  Our bodies get tired and worn out and we die.  Modern medicine can intervene in certain circumstances for a time but ultimately this is a process that each of us will go through over which we do not have control.

Jesus, on the other hand, knew the details of who would do what, when they would do it, and how He would die.  He’s been giving specific details for some time, just like the prophet did hundreds of years before.  Although people were involved in the process of Jesus torture and death, Jesus had control over every moment of the experience.  He was not going through it all as a victim but as a volunteer.  What amazing love God has for us.

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”  John 10:17-18

Loving God, our minds can’t quite wrap themselves around this depth of love and commitment except to be so grateful that Jesus voluntarily carried out Your loving plan that won forgiveness and salvation for us. 

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.  1 Peter 2:24

That Jesus took our sins and sicknesses on Himself and hung on the cross until He died, even though He could have called thousands of angels to release Him and deal with His murderers, this is love, as the old song says, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

During our own times where we accompany others, or enter into our own journey of suffering and death, help us to remember that we don’t go through it alone.  You who understand the depths of sorrow and suffering and still volunteered to go through it for us, You are with us.  You are carrying us.  You are comforting us.  You are showing us a way forward because Jesus, You truly are the way, the truth, and the life.

With an ancient man of prayer we pray:  Father, we abandon ourselves into your hands; do with us what you will. Whatever you may do, we thank you: We are ready for all.  We accept all. Let only your will be done in us.  We wish no more than this, O Lord.