“𝐅𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫, 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐮𝐩 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐦𝐞; 𝐲𝐞𝐭 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 𝐛𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞.” — 𝐋𝐮𝐤𝐞 𝟐𝟐:𝟒𝟐
There is a garden in the middle of the worst night in human history. Did you ever think about that? That Jesus was born in a barn and betrayed in a garden? Normal places, but so symbolic. God sure knows how to paint His stories with nuance.
Jesus had just shared a final meal with the people He loved most. He had washed their feet and broken bread and passed the cup and tried to prepare them for something that would level them and they wouldn’t understand until later. And then He walked out into the dark, to a place called Gethsemane.
That garden was at the bottom of the Mount of Olives, and I need you to think about the history there: This is the same mountain where David fled when his son Absalom betrayed him, and the mountain where Zechariah prophesied Jesus would return. It is maybe the most theologically loaded hillside in human history.
Did you know that “Gethsemane” means “oil press?” It’s a mechanism they use to crush olives to produce something valuable.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
He knelt down, and He prayed such a vulnerable, honest prayer, and He didn’t dress it up. He just fell on His knees in the dirt and in the original language, He called God “אַבָּא,” or “Abba.” That’s a word small children used, equivalent to “daddy” or “papa.”
Essentially, He said, “Dad, if there’s any other way, please. Take this cup from me.”
The Son of the God who spoke the world into existence, the Savior who calmed the sea with His voice, asked His Dad if there was any other way. He felt the weight of what was coming. The physical agony, of course, but also the spiritual and cosmic weight of carrying every sin ever committed by every person who would ever live. Can you imagine? For that time, all the guilt, all the pain, all the temptation and hate and selfishness and longing and all the things that plague our human nature, all of that was HIS.
In His most human and desperate and vulnerable moment, the name He reached for was the most intimate one He knew. In His full humanity, He asked His Dad if maybe He wouldn’t have to do this. 𝑃𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒, 𝐷𝑎𝑑.
God said no. Not with words, necessarily, but the cup didn’t pass.
The Bible tells us that God sent an angel, though, not to rescue Him or to reroute the plan, but to strengthen Him for what was ahead. God didn’t remove the suffering. He showed up inside of it.
And then Jesus said the bravest thing anyone’s ever said in possibly the worst moment anyone’s ever had: “Not My will, but Yours be done.”
I have prayed some desperate prayers in my life. I’ve been on my knees asking God to change outcomes of the inevitable, to heal people I loved, to reroute plans that felt unbearable. I know some of you reading this are in a place just like that right now. You’re in your own garden, in your own dark night, asking God to please, please find another way.
And sometimes He does. Sometimes the cup moves and the miracle happens and you get to stand there in front of Him with tears streaming down your face in pure gratitude. But sometimes the angel comes to strengthen and comfort instead.
Just like with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, sometimes God’s answer isn’t deliverance from the fire, but His presence inside it. He doesn’t always pass the cup but sometimes instead gives us the strength to drink it.
And here’s what I’ve learned, more often reluctantly than not: That kind of answer requires more trust than the miracle does. It requires you to loosen your grip on the outcome and really believe that He is good even when the cup is bitter.
Not my will, but yours. Do what’s best here, Dad, no matter what my cost.
That sentence is the hinge all of history swings on, primarily in the garden that night, but also in every moment we face something we didn’t choose and can’t control. It’s the declaration of a faith that has moved past asking God to be our helper and into trusting Him as our Dad.
Jesus made it through Gethsemane. And because He drank that cup all the way to the bottom, Sunday was coming.
But you know what? Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6 both tell us that the Holy Spirit living inside us causes us to cry out, “Abba, Father,” as well. The same word, and the same intimacy. The Apostle Paul is saying in those passages that because of what happened after Gethsemane, because of Jesus’s suffering at the cross and the victory of the resurrection, we as believers are adopted into the same relationship Jesus had with His Dad.
Abba. We get to use that word too. We get to come to God in the dirt on our knees in our worst hour in the dark and call Him Dad and know He hears us.
Whatever garden you’re in right now, whatever cup you’re holding, whatever prayer you’ve prayed that hasn’t moved the mountain yet, He is with you in it. And Sunday is still coming.
Abba, not my will. Yours.
