Renee Andrews's Blog - Posts Tagged "cross"

Mondays with Jesus 2017: Devotions to Begin Each Week of the Year
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” Matthew 26:39

My husband likes old cars, particularly old Mustangs. He has a ’67 Mustang (that’s about all I know about it, but he could give you a ton of car lingo that would mean something to car enthusiasts). Recently, he bought a ’92 Mustang convertible that had seen better days. It didn’t run. In fact, we could hardly find anything on the car that worked. However, it was priced at $300, so my sweet Cajun decided it was worth the investment. He tinkered with it for months, rebuilding an engine to get it running again and replacing almost every part that formed the car.

Eventually, I needed to run errands, and that Mustang was my car of choice. I was impressed at how well it ran, given we’d had it towed to the house. But I quickly learned that the vehicle was still a work in progress.

After completing my errands, I started home. That’s when the skies turned dark, and rain poured down. Not an ordinary rain, but the kind that comes with a severe thunderstorm of tornadic proportions. Unfortunately, this was when I realized my husband had yet to put the wipers back on the car. The air, heat and defroster also hadn’t been fixed yet, and the windows started fogging with the changing temperature. Luckily, I was able to roll the windows down, but that only caused the rain to dump all over me as I squinted through the storm and attempted to find a shoulder on the side of the road where I could park the car until the storm passed.

The biggest problem? I had just started across a bridge with no shoulder when the rain began. I couldn’t see the lines on the road. I couldn’t tell when the bridge ended. My hazard lights didn’t work. I slowed the car to a near crawl as I tried to see, which only caused other cars to zoom past and send more water through the window.

Years ago, I would have yelled. Or cried. And I did cry, but my cries were to my Father. “Lord, don’t let it happen this way. This isn’t how I want to die.” An eighteen wheeler passed me, and I honestly could no longer see. The windshield was completely fogged over. And I continued praying. I put one arm out of the window and began waving it up and down, as if this might let the other cars know my dilemma. And maybe it did, because they all slowed and stayed behind me, allowing me to marginally see the path ahead well enough to tell when the bridge ended, and when I could safely ease over to the shoulder.

But even then, as I came to a standstill, I prayed. I thanked God for being there through the storm, and I thanked Him for answering my prayer. I did think there was a chance I’d be hit, that my car would be pushed over the side of that bridge or that an eighteen wheeler would crash into me at any moment. But my Lord granted my request. I didn’t want to die that way, and I didn’t.

And then I thought about Christ’s request, when He prayed to His Father at Gethsemane. He asked for the cup to be taken from Him. He asked God not to die that way. But unlike me, when I prayed through my journey across that bridge, Christ didn’t merely ask not to die that way. He also prayed that God’s will be done. And unlike me, He wasn’t facing a mere death that would lead me into a blissful eternity. The cup He asked God to take away was my sin. And all sin. The sin of the world. Placed upon Christ, the Perfect One, the only man who had never sinned.

The pain of what He bore that day is unimaginable. And He knew it would be. Unlike me, in my pitiful trek with the Mustang, Christ knew what would surely happen. He knew what would come and the agony He would face at the cross. But He still prayed…Thy will, not Mine.

And He still went to the cross.

This Week: Reflect on the cross, on the pain that came with the weight of our sin, and on the prayer where Christ asked for that cup to pass…but also asked that His Father’s will be done. End each of your prayers this week with, “Thy will be done.”

Renee Andrews