Our penultimate Lent devotion is from Ronald, Director of Individual Giving at Habitat for Humanity International. He is based in Kampala, Uganda. Read his devotion below.
There is no love like the love between a parent and child, which is why losing a child is always difficult. As Jesus prays the words in the above Scripture on the Mount of Olives, the pain associated with loss and letting go is centre stage in the back-and-forth petitioning between Father and Son. It is Father and Son venturing into a realm requiring the will to lose, to give up ownership and the familiar. It is a realm of faith in the unknown, where hope is experienced before and not after, and the unseen is witnessed but not without physical pain and loss.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book The Cost of Discipleship, captures this standoff neatly in describing the call to discipleship: “If we must follow Jesus, we must take certain definite steps. The first step, which follows the call, cuts the disciple off from his previous existence. The call to follow at once produces a new situation. To stay in the old situation makes discipleship impossible.”
That call demands from our scriptural text a transition from “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from me …” to “… yet not my will, but Yours be done.” It is a call to obedience and, as Bonhoeffer aptly states, “places the disciple in the situation where faith is possible.”
Lent is a reminder not of negative natural unknowns that draw fear, but of redemptive love displayed throughout Scripture and in everyday people representing the church: from Abraham’s test of faith with his son Isaac (Genesis 22:1–19), to Levi’s loss of the tax collector’s booth (Matthew 9:9), to Millard Fuller’s journey to Habitat for Humanity. Redemptive love for a world so in need always hangs on the caveat “… yet not my will, but Yours be done.” It hangs on the will to give up “ownership” and rides on faith in God. Only then can it change intangible hope to a tangible experience as we put God’s love into action to build homes, communities and hope around the world.
Father, You are sovereign over all creation. Thank You for all You have given me to hold in trust and for the good laws You have put in place to govern life. As I go about this day, may I walk in confidence, knowing that You have a succession plan for everything and every situation before me. Help me do nothing but Your will in Christ Jesus, for Your kingdom’s glory. Amen.
