Holy Week Thursday : Jesus’s Last Night

Jesus’s Last Night

Photo credit: Waiting For The Word via Visual hunt / CC BY

Jesus’s last night started with fellowship, but change can come so suddenly. Unexpected events and tragedy strike the heart with such sadness and fierceness.

I remember a night when someone abandoned me and forsook me. I sat in a stranger’s house. My newly-wedded husband decided to leave me after only a few days of marriage. I thought my world ended in a huge crash. This experience only gives me a glimpse of Jesus’s emotions as His final night skidded into death.  While I went home to family, Jesus’s destination seemed so much darker and bleak.

Jesus’s last night started with fellowship, washing of feet, and a final meal. He felt betrayal too that night just as I did, but his betrayal took Him to his death.

Unlike me, he foresaw all these events. I married my husband in trust and love, but Jesus lived and knew a traitor walked in his midst. He knew Judas’s  fate involved betraying him to crucifixion and death. During the Last Supper, Jesus revealed Judas’ treachery and told Peter that he too would deny Him three times before the last morning cock’s crow.  Not only that, he knew everyone would desert Him. I imagine how lonely and depressed He must have felt knowing the darkness that awaited him.

Because of what Jesus experienced, He understood me when in my own dark night, I sat by myself in a strange room with flower pots and a television, watching the screen with the volume on mute. Tears flowing wondering why my first husband forsook me and left me all alone in the California desert. I prayed for God’s help and rescue.   He kept me company and comforted me because 2000 years before he faced even greater temptations and despair than I faced that lonely night.

Again, however, I never felt the depth of sadness Jesus must have felt that last evening of His life. My story does not compare. Jesus, also in a desert setting, went to a garden with His disciples. He felt so alone he cried tears of blood, streaming down His face. He begged his disciples to watch for Him, but when He came back to them He found them asleep. Then came the ultimate kiss of betrayal from Judas followed by a miracle of healing of an ear after a disciple lopped it off.

Jesus went like a lamb. He did not fight back. He accepted the cup sat before Him as God’s will just as He prayed only minutes earlier.

Jesus’s last night ended with the temple Guards beating Him and yelling at Him.

Luke 22 63 And the men that held Jesus mocked him, and beat him. 64 And they blindfolded him, and asked him, saying, Prophesy: who is he that struck thee? 65 And many other things spake they against him, reviling him.

My first marriage annulled, I continued my life in Christ. I survived my betrayal and went on to have a wonderful family and life. Jesus made that possible with His great sacrifice. He worked all things to my good just as He promises in His Holy Word, but the cost of His mercy and grace overwhelms me at times. His bravery and His love surpasses any I could ever feel.

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MaryHill16″]Have you ever felt betrayal and abandonment? Jesus understands and knows the depth of your pain.[/tweetthis]

Hebrews 2:10 For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons and daughters unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. KJV

This post is written for Day 24 of the March Slice of Life Story Challenge,

I will also join several of the hops listed on my Link-up Parties page