Peace and beauty of God's love found in gardens

This is a story about a garden with an unusual name. Gethsemane—pronounced “geth-sem-a-nee.” In the Greek it means “the place of the olive press.” The garden is in Jerusalem at the base of the Mount of Olives. This is where the harvest of olives from its slopes was brought to press out the oil they contained.

It is also the place Jesus came the night before He was to die. He loved that garden — its peace and beauty — and He'd often gone there for respite. I imagine many of us also seek peace in a garden.

This visit was different. Tomorrow was death on a cross. He knew it and He walked toward it. Unflinchingly. He had come to His own creation, to live among humankind made in His image — because these stubborn and self-willed people had forgotten that image — had lost sight of who they were. He had shown them again.

But it wasn't enough. He wanted them to have glorious life with Him that does not run out. And to do that they needed a way out of life as they were living it. They needed someone without sin who would die in their place and bring them God's forgiveness. Someone who would forever restore to them what they had lost.

And so Jesus, the Son of God, found Himself in the garden, kneeling on the dampened earth calling in agony to His heavenly Father, “If You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Yes, He faced the morrow unflinchingly — yet the weight of it was so crushing in that place where the olives were pressed for their oil that His first blood was shed before He ever hung from the cross. His sweat “became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.”

I'll be honest. It's very hard every year during Holy Week to go to the garden with Jesus — and then to the immense suffering of the cross the next day — Good Friday. I want to jump to Easter Sunday. The suffering is over, the tomb empty — death vanquished. Let's live on!

Forgiveness through faith in Christ brings life without end. It brings, too, a remembering in this life for who God created me to be. And a power and presence to be that person. Even with setbacks — which certainly come — the desire is there to keep reclaiming His image.

Yet I cannot forget the cost, the sorrow, even as I run to the joy of Easter, and the wonder of a risen Savior. It is no coincidence that Jesus suffered in a garden, kept His redemption promise to the world there — and after breathing His last on the cross saying, “It is finished,” was placed nearby in a garden tomb. I love it that the first thing He saw when He rose from the grave was a garden.