He feels it too

This is the first time in a long time I have found a living example I could connect with.

Yeah, I'd heard about the prophet Elijah and how he had a great spiritual high followed by a depression. And I heard about Peter and his passion for Jesus that led him to pride and say "even if all others fall away, I won't." And I saw Moses, how though he was told as a young man who God was and that he belonged to God's people, it wasn't till he was an old man that God personally gave him a testimony of it. These stories have brought me some comfort to think there is hope for me.

It's this story though that helps me most, so far: Jesus asked three times in the nighttime of the garden before his arrest, "Take this cup from me."

Jesus was the one who in the beginning set forth a battle with a fallen creature named Satan. He is the one who designed the idea to place a tree of choice in the middle of Eden, and who cast humanity out of paradise with a curse, the cherubim and their flaming swords preventing return. Jesus designed all this as the fate of our universe. And yet here in the garden He said "Everything is possible with God. Take this cup from me." So I assume He could have done it. He had everything at his command. He could have gathered up all his saints in a single moment, even without suffering and dying; without drinking that bitter cup. He could have made our universe without needing a Savior to suffer.

So why?

Why drink it, Jesus? You have all power to stop it. You are deeply distressed and troubled. You know that they all are just about to flee your side. Even the Father will turn His back. It leaves you all alone, and friendless, pressing on to do what had been set out by your plan.

Oh... so You really do understand the forsaken, then.

On 4/9/07 I wrote in a blog entry titled "Question":

Why is it that God came for the broken and for the sinners? The oppressed, those without, etc.? Why does he call himself their God? It seems to me God is claiming to be all about a group of people who want nothing to do with Him.

The account of Jesus in the garden before his arrest is a fulfillment of prophecy in Psalm 88:8....

"You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape."