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When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power. – I Cor 2:1-5

Paul is giving instruction to a church. Among other things, there seems to have been some division on who the church was following. Some were saying they were better than others because the were baptized by this person or that. They were influenced by a certain person, so they must be better. They must be right.

Paul just lays it down. The messengers are nothing, the wisdom is nothing. The real deal is Jesus. Period. Nothing more.

The recent stuff with Ted Haggard has hit me pretty hard. I have met Ted, read a book he wrote, been to his church, even talked briefly one afternoon with one of his staff.

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“If I have put my trust in gold or said to pure gold, ‘You are my security,‘ – Job 31:24

This verse stings. Job is in the middle of his life crisis, where everything is taken away and he is left with a choice: be bitter or trust God. He once had everything. He now has nothing.

I know I would have been thinking, “OK, my life is a mess. When I had some money, it was better. It won’t solve everything, but it will bring some security.”

Job has been there. Done that. He knows that security can only come from God. What a deep lesson.

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Then everyone deserted him and fled. – Mark14:50

Jesus had just come from the most intense time of prayer to date in the Garden of Gethsemane. He took a break from praying and returned to Peter, James, and John. My guess is hat Jesus was hoping to find them praying with the same intensity as Jesus. Instead of finding three friends engaged in an intense spiritual battle, he found them sleeping. That had to be a kick in the gut.

Jesus is soon surrounded by guards. They come and arrest him. The disciples leave. Everyone of them. Jesus was without human companionship at a most crucial time. Another kick.

Sometimes I wonder if Jesus can really identify with some of my struggles. Among other things, I wonder of he can really understand what it is to feel alone and abandoned. I don’t feel much a sense of being totally alone. I have in the past. In those times, can he really identify with what I am feeling? He can.

Maybe it is in the pressures of life that I can be the closest to Christ. in suffering, I meet the one who suffered.

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