Heartfelt Agony

It was a day of agony. It was not as you might think, however. We had a very packed schedule after the frolicking in the Dead Sea yesterday. Today, Pastor Jim shared some amazing insights in the Garden of Gethsemane about the agony that Christ went through there in the garden of olive trees. To see the gnarly, knotted trunks of olive trees dating back to Jesus day made my heart just skip. The olive tree is not a particularly beautiful tree. The trunk is not smooth like other trees in the US. It is a trunk of character. As much as Christ displayed great character and obedience going to the cross, the real battle of wills was won not on the cross, but right there in the Garden. If he has not made up in his mind to purpose to go the cross there in the Garden, the war of wills would have failed miserably before his complete and selfless obedience paid for all of our sin. Not one of us is excluded from this powerful vignette. The day ended with another scene of agony as we visited the Holocaust museum commemorating the tragedy of inconceivable proportions in Germany in the 1940’s. While the world watched, millions of Jews died needlessly, painfully and without a chance or a choice. The moving, sometimes graphic pictures and artifacts were haunting. At the end of the exhibit was a unique room: rows and rows of bound books cataloguing the names of those who died. A shaft of light streaming through a hole in the pinnacle of the ceiling with a dome full of 600 pictures—faces of those whose names are written in these books. They had no chance, their voices will never be heard again. The name of the museum is Yad Vashem, a reference to “remembering the names.” God brought a song into my mind after seeing this museum. It goes like this: He knows my name…He knows my every thought; He hears my cry and -----me when I call…..I have to believe that our merciful God heard everyone of those 6+ million cries. The question is did we?