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“Then he said to them, ‘my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.’”
Matthew 26:36
One of my favorite scenes from the Gospels is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is in that moment we truly see the humanity of Jesus. He is on His knees, pleading before His father; the grief of the moment is pressing heavy on His soul and He is overwhelmed with emotion. Adding to His frustration is that the fact that the three men He chose to rely on consistently let Him down by falling asleep. I can’t even begin to imagine how He felt but I do know we received a glimpse of the man in that moment instead of the divine.
So often, when we are struggling with difficult times, we are hesitant to give into the grief. Instead, we try and lock it away, tough it out, and simply just deal with it. We internalize the pain sometimes to the point where we become sick or hurt relationships with our friends and family. But Jesus reminds us it is okay to grieve. It is okay to cry out in anguish. It is okay to get lost in the quiet moments and be unhappy.
Of course, Jesus also reminds us through His time in the garden, that God wants us to grieve with Him. Just as Jesus fell to His knees in supplication and poured out His grief to His father, He wants us to do the same. When we walk in the garden with Jesus, we bare our souls, share our grief, and lay our troubles at His feet. We share our humanity with the divine just as He shared it with us.
