Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.
Matthew 26:41
What battles you fought (and won!)
that night beneath the shadows of Gethsemane
as the trio of your close companions
slept on in ignorance and sorrow.
(Job, too, knew scant comfort
from those three friends who came
to sit beside him in his trials.)
There your soul was tormented and twisted
like the gnarled trunks of the olive trees standing watch
(what sacred secrets they witnessed
and still keep in silver-leafed silence)
as Satan seized that opportune time
(long awaited since his failures in the wilderness)
to test and try you once again.
Your sweat fell
(wrung and pressed from you in anguish
like the oil running down the olive press nearby),
mingled with those first drops of your blood
that was before long to run so freely from your veins.
Terror and distress
must have taunted and mocked your resolve
and made a tight knot in your stomach
as you anticipated and recoiled
from the pain and agony soon to come to you.
As you knelt in earnest prayer
(so full of dread, yet in determined obedience)
did you first feel
that your Father’s heart
was as merciless and unyielding
as the cold rock you leaned against?
And yet you won through those fearful hours
and the temptations that laid siege to you,
strengthened by an angel
(who surely trembled at the horror – and the privilege –
of being sent on such mission)
till all that remained was to drink to the dregs
the cup you willingly took up,
now sure it was not to be removed from you,
holding fast to your Father’s will
that all (I, too) might be restored to him.
Readied now, go to receive Judas’ traitorous kiss
and greet your captors.
Copyright © 1998 by Jeanne Kun
Top image: Agony in the Garden, painting by El Greco, 1590-95, in the National Gallery of Art, London UK. In the public domain.
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Jeanne Kun is a noted author, and a member of Bethany Association, an international, ecumenical association of women living single for the Lord in various communities of The Sword of the Spirit, and a senior woman leader in the Word of Life Community, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.