Gethsemane: The Strange, Lone Struggle

<u>The Pathway In.</u>

Great events always send messengers ahead. There is a movement in the
spirit currents. A sort of tremor of expectancy affects the finer currents
of air. The more sensitively organized one is, that is to say, the more
the spirit part of a man dominates body and mind, the more conscious will
he be of the something coming.

Jesus was keenly conscious ahead of the coming of Calvary. Apart from the
actual knowledge, there was a painful thrill of expectancy, intensifying
as the event came nearer. The cross cast long, dark shadows ahead. The
darkest is Gethsemane. It would be, for it was nearest. But there were
other shadows before that of the olive grove. Jesus plainly reveals in His
behavior, in His appearance, that He felt keenly, into the very fibre, so
sensitively woven, of His being, that the experience of the cross would be
a terrific one for Him. It was deliberately chosen by Him, and the time of
its coming chosen in the full knowledge that it would be an awful ordeal.
It would establish the earth's record for suffering, never approached
before or since.

As He turns His face for the last time away from Galilee, and to Judea,
it is with the calmness of strong deliberation. Yet the intenseness of the
inner spirit, in its look ahead, is shown in His face, His demeanor. As He
comes to a certain Samaritan village on the road south, the usual
invitation to stop for rest and a bit of refreshment is withheld out of
respect to His evident purpose. It is clear to these villagers that His
face is set to go to Jerusalem. In Luke's striking language, "_His face
was going to Jerusalem._" What going to Jerusalem meant to Him had no
meaning to them. They saw only that face, and were so caught by the
strong, stern determination plainly written there that they felt impelled
not to offer the usual hospitality.

They were Samaritans, it is true, a half-breed race, hated by Jews, and
hating them, but invariably they had been friendly to Jesus. That must
have been a marked face that held back these homely country people from
pressing their small attentions upon Jesus. They are keener to read the
meaning of that face than are these disciples who are more familiar with
the sight of it. The impress already made upon the inner spirit by the
great event toward which Jesus had determinedly set Himself was even thus
early marked in His face.

Later, on that journey