Desire What God Wants

Those of you who are good Christians know how God often gives to us just what we need, when we need it. So it shouldn’t surprise you that out of the over 100 meditations in the small book I have been reading each morning, the following mediation was next in line for today, this day of mid-Holy Week. The reading is most fitting for today, and so I found meaning which I might not have found had I read it on most other days.

Perhaps it was meant for me to read today; and perhaps for you also.

Desire What God Wants
And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” - Matt 26:39

Life can unexpectedly ask of us something we believe is so big and so overwhelming that we don’t think we can handle it. We cry out to be relieved of the pain, to be removed from the situation, or to be exonerated. We know that we can’t manage it ourselves and feel deeply our helplessness and vulnerability. That’s the moment when we recognize that the only way we are going to survive the situation is to throw ourselves on the mercy of God. How close we can be at such ties to the pain of Jesus’ own struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane as we finally acknowledge, as he did, that the only real surrender is to what God wants.

“God of mercy, you know my pain! I am bereft of any comfort or peace, and feel totally unable to change things myself. Save me from the depths of my distress. Please remove from me the cause of my great suffering, and let me find rest in you. You can save me if you will. But let me add, from my broken heart, that I trust you will carry me through this pain. So I ask to let be whatever is your will. You will give me strength.”
Surrendering Our Stress – by Joan Gunzelman