Gethsemane
[Note: This piece was originally published in the Lenten devotional of Wheaton College]
Nineteen years ago, I was wide-eyed freshman at a well-respected Bible College full of young women and men desiring to go into pastoral ministry and missions, when I got a jarring call that propelled me out of blissful adolescence straight into adulthood.
“She’s dead, I’m so sorry, she died.”
My world went spinning, so much so I hung up because I thought my friends were playing a horrible prank that was not funny. To my shock and grief, it was true, my roommate had just died from a tragic car accident. The whirlwind of memorials, tributes, a funeral, and trips across multiple states to grieve with friends and family took me to a dark moment in my dorm room one lonely evening. “God,” I said, “If this is what it means to serve you, if this is what faithfulness looks like, then I don’t know if I can keep living.” My roommate loved the Lord, she wanted to be a children’s pastor and help kids discover who they were in Christ, and she had died. I didn’t understand.
In the darkness I heard an almost-audible voice that cried out to me, “I Am Faithful.” It was both a promise and a name. In the darkness I wept and, in an instant, knew that God was present in my pain. Faithfulness in that moment, meant nearness, all things being made new, and the hope of the final resurrection.
Throughout the years that same promise has meant many other things: provision, joy, opportunities, comfort in loss, grace in my weakness, the steady hand of the Lord ever near, even when it feels far. But most of all, it’s a name. Faithful. I Am Faithful.
In Psalm 119:50 the writer says, “This is my comfort in my suffering, your word gives me life.” In Hebrew the word imar is what is translated as word. It means both the spoken word and the word of God. It is through Scripture we see the promises given to us of the hope of the final resurrection when all war and pain and crying ceases. When brokenness is no more, where justice reigns, when God comes and makes all things new, wiping every tear from our eyes and ending death forever (Rev. 21). His written word gives us hope in grief.
I am reminded of the dark night in Gethsemane as Jesus cried out in anguish. Yet in his resolve to go to the cross he knew that his resurrection would also bring about our own future resurrection. I can’t help but think, in his pain, the words of the psalmist danced in his mind, “This is my comfort in my suffering, your word gives me life.”
In my grief, many years ago as death seemed to take, the One who is faithful reminded me he makes all things new, that he is the God of the resurrection and to this day, that word gives me life.
Whatever you may be walking through whether it may be grief, joy, despair, triumph, questions, or certainty, cling to God’s word. Remind yourself of what he’s written for you and spoken to you. In your suffering, it will give you life. May you lament with hope that in the end we will overcome in shouts of joy.
