I stand amazed, in the garden
Week 1, Power to Pray, Day 7: A Parallel in Prayer’s
Place
(Read Luke 22:39, John 18:26)
I was at a funeral recently and they sang the most obligatory funeral hymn I
know: “In the Garden.” My daughter leaned over to me and said, “I really don’t
like this song.”
I just
smiled. Several others have said that, including one pastor who said it was “a
mile wide and an inch deep.” Another said it was not Biblical. But when someone
said it just didn’t make sense, I had to spring to the song’s defense. To me,
it is about spending time talking with God and hearing from Him through His
Holy Word.
You see, when
I was saved, my mother gave me a book, saying that our lives are like a garden,
with good things like lively flowers and beautiful plants, but also with weeds,
thorns, and brambles. When we receive Christ as Savior, as a gardener who
arranges the garden by pulling out the weeds and putting the plants and flowers
in order, Jesus takes away our sins and gives order and purpose for our lives.
While in
college, I shared that testimony to a church before heading out as a summer
missionary. By God’s design, the song minister had unwittingly placed that hymn
in the order of service. I knew then and there I wanted that song sung at my
own funeral.
Jesus had a
place for prayer, just outside of Jerusalem to the east on the way to Bethany.
He prayed often in other places, in deserts, in mountains, in private, in
public, before meals, even at a funeral. But the garden of Gethsemane was
special to Him. “He went out with His disciples over the Brook Kidron, where
there was a garden, which He and His disciples entered… Jesus often met there
with His disciples,” (John 18:1-2b).
Perhaps the
garden was special because it reminded Him of the Garden of Eden, where God
first formed humanity. Or because He knew that when He returns, “His feet
will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the
Mount of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west,” (Zechariah 14:4a).
I believe the
very name of the garden was significant to Jesus. Gethsemane literally means
“oil press,” so named because olives were pressed, even crushed there in order
to release the rich and valuable oil from the olives. According to Ray Vander
Laan, in his series That the World May Know, “heavy stone slabs were lowered
onto olives that had already been crushed in an olive crusher. Gradually, the
slabs weight squeezed the olive oil out of the pulp, and the oil ran into a
pit. There the oil was collected in clay jars…The weight of the sins of the
world pressed down upon him like a heavy slab of rock pressed down on olives in
their baskets.”
Twice, I have
been to the garden at Gethsemane and twice the emotions of the moment
overwhelmed me. It reminds me of a line from another song that I hope will also
be sung at my funeral: “He had no tears for His own griefs / But sweat drops of
blood for mine.”
I of course
will not be at my funeral. I will be standing amazed in His presence.
Pray this prayer to God: “How marvelous, how wonderful, is, my Savior,
Your love for me. Thank you for making my sins and my sorrows and taking them
to Calvary. Remind me that until I stand in Your presence, the closest place I
can be is in prayer. Amen.”
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