Among the Watering Places with Liz

     Gethsemane was a place of crushing.  Here, in the agony of prayer, Jesus' sweat fell like great drops of blood and an angel from heaven came to strengthen Him (Luke 22:43).  I nterfacing with the angel reinvigorated the Lord.  He would be strong enough now to face the lethally violent confrontation with the enemy of God.       The angel’s appearance to Jesus in His moment of extreme crisis is the first time t his verb “to strengthen or invigorate” ( Gk. enischuo ) is used in the NT.   P roperly, it means being strong enough to face  necessary confrontation , that is, engage resistance .   In this case, Jesus resisted His own will and bowed before the will of His Father. Physical death was not averted, but neither was resurrection.       When Jesus asked His closest friends, “Will you not watch with me one hour?” there is no doubt that the death knell was already ringing for Him.   He had mad...

D.L. Moody once said, "In the valley of the shadow of death there must be a light,  otherwise there could not be a shadow."            After a holiday in South Africa, some years ago, my husband Peter and I began the flight home together from Johannesburg, but due to an airline mix-up, we were separated in Mauritius.  He was off-loaded and obliged to stay in Port Louis for a week until the next available flight to Australia.  It was a frustrating time for him as he had no ready cash and was obliged to put up in a very shabby hotel.  Out of sheer boredom, he caught the local bus every day and rode around the island.  His only other occupation was to read James A. Mitchener's lengthy novel Centennial , two and a half times.       Mid-week, Mauritius was hit by a cyclone.  The palm trees along the centre of the capital city's streets were flattened, broken off at their base by the terrific winds wh...

When you go through deep waters, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown. When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you. Isa 43:2 NLT       When I cannot understand, I can choose to trust in God's goodness. It is in the hour of our infirmity when we do not know how to pray, that the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf with groanings that cannot, and perhaps need not, be uttered.

     "Scripture's task is to tell people, at the risk of their displeasure, the mystery of God and the secrets of their own hearts - to speak out and make a clean breast.  There are many ways to say and write these truths:  in oracles, in poems, in novels, in sermons, in satire, in journalism, in drama.      Honestly written and courageously presented words reveal reality and expose our selfish attempts to violate beauty, manipulate goodness and dominate people, all the while defying God.  Most of us most of the time, whether consciously or not, live this way.      Honest writing shows us how badly we are living and how good life is. Enlightenment is not without pain.  But the pain, accepted and endured, is not a maiming but a purging.  "Every significant utterance is a wound, but 'faithful are the wounds of a friend'.""                           ...