It's All About Easter - What's in your cup (Besides Coffee) ?

When we encounter death or other severe losses and heartaches...

The worst thing is not the sorrow or the loss or the heartbreak. The worst thing is to be encountered by death and not to be changed by the encounter. 
-- Richard John Neuhaus, As I Lay Dying

"...to have the experience and miss the meaning" 
T S. Eliot, Four Quartets


When we experience pain and heartbreak, sometimes there are pills or drugs we can take to help us get through the dark days. Or we can try frantic acts of busyness to deaden our emotions.

Part of that danger, though,  is that the experience is still waiting when we are through with the pills and the frenzied activities. We didn't move on; we just delayed facing the grief.

The other part of the danger is that God intended us to experience the pain and suffering.

His goal? To make us into images of His Son, who did not take pills to deaden His pain.

There are people in our society, who, through carefully prescribed medication, receive the help they need to get through life. To avoid, as Shakespeare described, "The slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune."

This is not about those folks...

For most of us, we should not get used to the ease in which we can resort to chemical relief...to the dulling of all the sharp edges of painful experience.

Jesus prayed, "Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will." (Mark 14)

Later at His arrest He said, "Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?" (John 18)

Of all who had ever lived on this planet, this omnipotent God-man had the ability to remove that cup. To smash it into pieces and throw it into utter cosmic darkness. He did not have to drink the cup.

But He chose to drink the cup.


I think the cup we are given always comes from our Father.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E're to take, as from a Father's hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting

Til I reach the promised land.

         Day by Day, by Caroline V. Sandell-Berg


Jesus drank the cup. He drained it dry. He lifted it up and took the very last drop.

Are we to do the same?