Your Gethsemane Experience can Lead to a Resurrection

 I just finished re-reading the book of John this morning, and I began picturing the closing chapters describing the Gethsemane experience of Jesus, agonizing in the dark aloneness before His Father, feeling the weight of the sins of the world descending on Him and causing Jesus to feel the separation from His Father. This was followed by the betrayal of a friend, and the abandonment of others who said they would never forsake Him, a one-sided trial, physical abuse and suffering and finally a crucifixion and death.   

And for the disciples, all hope was totally smashed and they spent the darkest, loneliest, most fearful weekend of their lives.  They questioned all that they learned and been through over the past 3 and a half years.  They wondered if it were all for nothing.  They forgot that just hours before, Jesus had told them plainly that He must suffer and die (read John ch 13-17)  And as they grieved, the oppressor of humanity came and peddled despair to add insult to injury.  Nothing had gone the way that they had hoped or planned.  But they had forgotten something.  God wasn’t following their plan. He was fulfilling His!  And His plans always turn out better than ours.

At the tomb, Sunday morning, a dejected Mary arrives to find it empty.  She makes assumptions and then  Runs back to Jerusalem and tells the disciples that Jesus’ body had been taken.  Peter and John run to the tomb and find the grave clothes and wonder what in the world had happened.  And though that dawn had split time in two, it had yet to dawn on them.  They left dejected as Mary finally got back.  

Let’s pick up the story in John 20.  John 20:11    Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. ¹² She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. ¹³  “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her. 

 “Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

14   She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. ¹⁵ “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?” 

 She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”

16   “Mary!” Jesus said. 

She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).

17    “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

18    Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

Later, Jesus Himself appeared among them, and at the risk of sounding cliché, the light finally dawned.  And new hope sprang to life. And they found, in Christ, all they had ever hoped for and more was resurrected within them.

Which leads me to this.  ALL of us will have our Gethsemane experiences.  We will feel separated from God.  We will feel the tempter and oppressor of our souls breathing his ugly, dark breath down our necks as he seeks to peddle despair to our discouraged hearts and snuff out any flicker of hope that may be seeking to rise.  He will have friends betray us, people abandon us, others judge us unfairly and then heap abuse on us in many various forms.

And he will seek to have you, in the midst of your distress,  pursue a course that would have you terminate your existence. And many do, as they often opt for a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and the enemy sweeps them into eternity.  But here is where Jesus’ death and resurrection made it possible for you and I to flip the script.

If you and I can only see it differently, we would see that in our darkest moments, we don’t have to give in to the temptation to end our existence, or our marriage, or whatever the temptation to give up on is, or even to lose hope.  But we can, like Jesus, pray for either the temptation to leave (let this cup pass from me) or for God to give us the strength to bear up under it.  (But not my will, YOUR will, Father) 

In either case, it leads to a death. But not a final one.  It actually becomes a death that leads to resurrection.  Paul called it “the death to self”(Gal 2:19) and even said, “I die every day!” (1 Cor 15:31). And this dying to self allows for a new resurrection.

You lay down all of the abuses, the judgments, the abandonment, the betrayal and look to Christ for restoration.  You choose to give up yourself and your will,  in deference to the Father’s will for your life, recognizing that HIS plan is always better than yours, and HE will remake things for you.

This winter, I have personally gone through what Mother Teresa, when speaking of her experience with God over the course of almost 50 years,  termed her “dark night of the soul”.  I have been beset by trauma’s in my youth perpetrated against me, stupid choices made in trying to work my own way out of difficulties, temptations from things that I thought were long since buried, discouragement in my work, depression and darkness and hopeless feelings and a desire to cash in 40 years of ministry.  And where I found hope was recognizing that I was in my own Gethsemane experience.  It was all dark around me…and the tempter of souls was screaming a thousand lies into my head…and he almost won.  I almost cashed it in and walked away from ministry and from God.   But I continued to hold on to my devotional habit and I forced myself to continue to go into the Word each day…though the rest of my day was often beset with darkness and depression.  

Where I found renewed hope was back in Gethsemane, the cross and the resurrection.  It is a metaphor for so much of what we experience.   We experience the darkness…sometimes the death of dreams or hopes…but God is a God of resurrections.  And He is restoring me daily.  I had to die to a few things in the darkness…with self being the one that I, like Paul, am having to relearn to die to daily.   And in the resurrections is where new hope is found.

Don’t run from your Gethsemane experience.  Stay there and ask God for the strength to endure it and then to rise once again to walk in the newness of life.

The Nerd Factory

By Don Keele Jr.

Who makes them? Is there a factory somewhere? How come we seem to have so many of them running around? Where do nerds come from?

Everywhere you look, there are nerds (or nerdettes) running around. You know the type: They don’t when to be quiet, they drop their tray in the cafeteria, they wear half-matching clothes, and most of them know the cube root of an airplane propeller (or at least could find it with the help of their trusty, ever-present calculator.)

I befriended a real nerd a few years ago, and as soon as it seemed safe, I asked him that question. “Where did you come from?”

His reply was typically nerdy. “From my parents,” he said.

Seeing that I wasn’t getting anywhere, I began relentlessly interrogating the nerd in search of some clue to answer my question. I asked about his parents, his clothes, and even the cube root of an airplane propeller (he didn’t know). Now, in hopes of helping all of us, I will report my findings. I must let you know that I have found, at least in part, the answer to this perplexing question.

Let me tell you his story.

Alan was born young, as many nerds are. But he didn’t know that he was destined to be a nerd for life, because actually Alan was very normal at birth. He did things like normal kids do. It wasn’t until later that he began developing nerd tendencies.

At first the problem centered in Alan’s parents. They didn’t want him. He was, as they told him many times, an “accident.” A ruining of their lives. At best, he was a major intrusion into their already-rocky relationship.

And he was hard to take care of in their nomadic existence. They had to be up early to get their trailer into the best slot at the flea market of whatever town they happened to be in. And to stop and feed a baby, or to chase him down as a toddler, was a huge bother. Sometimes too much of a bother. Mostly he had to go hungry or put up with being locked in a tiny trailer closet most of the day so he wouldn’t wander off. Sometimes when he cried he got beat severely. I mean, who was he to get hungry at their busiest time? So what if he was only 1 year old? The kid had to learn patience and obedience.

Alan grew, and as state laws dictate, he had to be put in school. His parents couldn’t afford to pay the fines for keeping him out of school. But putting him in school would restrict their travels and their income.

To make matters worse, they had another “accident” about this time and were having to teach this new one the hard facts of life like they had taught Alan. They finally decided to settle in a community close to a large metropolitan area. At least while Alan was in school, they could lock the younger one in the closet and go sell at the flea market.

Life for Alan was getting more complicated. He tried to do well in school, but he had problems understanding everything. It probably had something to do with the time, at age 3, when his dad knocked him unconscious and fractured his skull. But Alan never thought of that. He only knew that he wasn’t as quick as the other kids. He’d heard his teacher tell his mom and dad that he was very slow, and that’s why he needed to repeat the first grade. On the way home his dad cursed him for being stupid.

Learning wasn’t the only area that caused him problems. Some of the other kids said he smelled funny. Some said that he had a bowl haircut (before it was popular). Others simply laughed and pushed him away whenever he asked to play with them. Sometimes he didn’t mind, but sometimes it made him mad, and soon he was labeled a discipline problem for fighting with the other kids. His dad beat him severely for being so violent with other kids.

By the time Alan reached the third grade, the other kids absolutely despised him, and his teacher simply tolerated him. The other parents talked about him, the principal knew him well, and the cafeteria director was totally disgusted with the way he “snarfed down” his food at lunch. “Why, it’s as if he hadn’t eaten in a week!” she exclaimed.

One day Alan’s dad dropped him off at school (it was kind of embarrassing to climb out of their beat-up motor home) and told him he would pick him up at 3:00 p.m. as usual. Alan said good-bye and went on into his third-grade room. At 3:00, he wandered outside and waited for the old “rolling garbage can,” as some of his classmates called the motor home. But it never showed up.

He waited: 4:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m., 7:30 p.m. And he was really getting hungry.

The police caught him digging through the trash dumpster behind a local college cafeteria. They took him to the trailer park where he lived and dropped him off.

His parent’s motor home wasn’t there, so Alan went to the office. “They checked out about 10:00 this morning. Paid their bill up and pulled out. Didn’t say where they were going. They musta left you behind accidental-like.”

Alan crawled underneath another trailer and curled up to sleep. He would look for them in the morning.

Three days and 65 miles later, he found them at a flea market in a neighboring town.

“How did you find us, you little jerk? You were supposed to find somewhere else to go. Don’t you know by now that we don’t want you?” His dad drove him back to school and drove away.

The pattern that had begun three days prior was repeated again and again until Alan’s parent’s finally gave up.

At school it didn’t go without notice that whenever Alan did come, his clothes were dirty, his hair was uncombed, his face and hands were filthy, and he took unusually large portions in the cafeteria at lunch. Alan learned that society is cruel and vicious to people who don’t look just right. The more his classmates teased and taunted him, the more Alan lashed out at them. Yet he wanted their acceptance more than anything.

By eighth grade, Alan was considered a real nerd. He tried to fit in, but his vile mouth and nerd-like ways won him more rejection, more lunch hours by himself, and no friends. If anyone did feel sorry for him and show him the least bit of attention, Alan would dog the person’s steps like a puppy gone mad with affection. Of course, this would inevitably end in rejection, because he would drive the person right up the wall.

Upon Alan’s graduation, his dad heard about a school that boarded kids—an academy, they called it. And his dad found out that a kid could word off most of his bill. So he dropped Alan off at the academy in midsummer. That’s where I met him.

Alan was always grinning stupidly or fighting, either loudmouthed or foulmouthed, always dressed wrong, and always so insanely dumb that he could be nothing but a real-life nerd. A case study in the making, I thought. At least that’s what I thought until our conversation.

As we talked I suddenly began to realize that Alan was the way he was because of the people around him: his parent, his elementary classmates, and people like me, who are so incredibly blind and insensitive that we heap more rejection on someone who needs so badly the acceptance we could offer. I mean, what would you or I be like if we’d been treated like Alan all of our lives?

My conclusion? There really is a “nerd factory”. And its workers are those of us who constantly dole out large or small doses of rejection. Those of us who make fun of or play jokes on the nerds in our life. When we try to make ourselves look better by climbing high on the broken pieces of those we destroy daily, we are worse off than any nerd.

Is it possible that Jesus could have been referring in part to nerds as “the least of these brothers of mine”? (Matthew 25:40, NIV) Or might Paul have had nerds in mind when he wrote “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought,” “but in humility consider others better than [yourself]”? (Romans 12:3 and Philippians 2:3, NIV)

I don’t know about you, but I’ve decided to quit the “nerd factory” and begin working at the “De-Nerding Center for Socially Deprived Children of God.” It’s going to be a hard and dirty job, but the way I see it, someone’s got to do it. And from what I hear, they have lots of positions available. Need an application?