As we prepare to enter into the crucible awaiting us, our disposition is one of great prayer to God to sustain us during the suffering we will have to endure. The suffering ahead for us and what lies beyond the suffering is unknown, and it is our fear of the unknown that is most frightening to us.
Within a week after my first hip replacement in June of 2011, I got a MRSA infection. I prayed to God that the strong, unpleasant antibiotic I was taking would kill the infection. After six weeks of unpleasantness, the course of the antibiotic ended. Within a week the MRSA infection came back with a vengeance. I was told by my surgeon that the artificial hip had to be removed. My regular doctor told me I was allergic to the the antibiotic I had been taking to kill the MRSA. Never had I been so on the cusp of despair. As a physical therapist observed to me later, he never saw me so despondent as I was at that time.
Little did I know the suffering that was going to be ahead for me. It was my moment in the Kidron Valley as I faced the great unknown of my future and how it would alter my life forever.
It was only in my reflecting back on this that I discovered that this was my moment when my life intersected with that of Jesus as he faced the torture and the execution of the next day. My life merged with the suffering of Jesus as we both stood before the great unknown and all we could do was pray to a God seemingly silent to our agony.
In our Paschal Journeys, we will all spend our time in the Kidron Valley fully knowing that what we will face will be terrible, and in desperation pray to God to sustain us and support as we enter into that suffering.
As you listen to this prayer song, “At Prayer In The Kidron Valley”, meditate on those moments in your life when you prayed to God for support and comfort, especially as you were confronted with the unknown of suffering that awaited you. In the Passion accounts of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, Jesus desperately prays to our Abba God, and God was seemingly deaf to Jesus’ prayer. Only in Luke’s account does God respond to the pleas of Jesus by sending an angel to comfort Jesus. In our moments in the Kidron Valley, was God silent to our pleadings, or did God send an angel in the form of a friend, a family member, or a nurse to comfort us.
This song is dedicated in memory of my brother, Bill, who died on February 1, 2019.
