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by Barb Mazarakos
Plans. We all make them. Plans for vacation, plans for home repairs, plans for the future. Sometimes things don’t go quite the way we had hoped the first time, so we default to Plan B. (Sometimes Plan C. Or D. Sometimes it’s a good thing we have 26 letters to work through before we get it right.)
Jesus, in His human form, wasn’t all that different. At least not that night in Gethsemane. You know the one I mean- He had just finished The Last Supper with His disciples. It was more than a meal, of course. That was the night that He reminded them that He would always be present in the bread and wine, and also the night He rightly predicted that one of them would betray Him while the rest would abandon Him.
We can only start to imagine the suffocating weight that landed on the shoulders of the human Jesus as He went to Gethsemane that night with Peter, John and James to pray. His request of them was simple: to stay awake and pray. As He moved a bit away from them, Jesus was overcome with anguish at what was to happen next. He prayed for a Plan B- “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39b) He didn’t want to die; sometimes we forget that. But He knew if it was the plan of His Father that He NEEDED to die. For you. And for me. Because that was the plan all along. As His disciples slept, He prayed two more times for the original idea to change; mercifully for us, it didn’t.
Sometimes it’s hard to go by faith alone, because we are only human. Just like Jesus once was. Even He struggled with doing what the Father called Him to, so don’t be surprised when it’s hard for you as well. We are called not only during Lent, but every day, to walk in Faith. To trust in the Lord. So make a Plan B when it comes to that camping trip during rainy weather or the kitchen remodeling project you are finally ready to tackle; not having an alternate strategy if things go wrong could cost you. But when it comes to your salvation, there’s no need for a Plan B. That price was paid long ago, after a night in Gethsemane when Jesus submitted to the plan of His Father. He bled for us. He died for us. He rose for us. It is finished.
Plan A worked.