A Case of the Nerves
Nerves are touchy things. When you get nervous you can throw-up, punch somebody, or say the stupidest things – all over something that hindsight sees quite differently. Nervousness is something that seems out of our control until we’ve worked it out of our systems. New experiences generate a kind of anxiety that familiar ones don’t. But it’s a physical thing. Nervousness affects our, well…um… nerves. Surprise, surprise.
The human body is a fascinating construct. We have a central nervous system, and a peripheral nervous system. In the PNS we find the effects of nervousness: sick-to-the-stomach, gas and bloating, or just “butterflies”. It’s amazing that there are memory cells surrounding our guts that replay nervous experiences over again. You can feel woozy just recalling that time you had to speak in front of 100 people. What goes on in our heads and hearts can show up in our bellies and bowels. Our bodies take some of the burdens we carry in our souls.
This is seen in the Lord Jesus when he was in the garden of Gethsemane. He said, “my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death”. As he prayed and considered what would take place on the cross, he went through a physical agonizing that eventually caused a condition called hematidrosis. His sweat glands burst and mixed with blood, and so Luke records that Jesus “sweat as it were great drops of blood.” The anguish in his soul poured out into his body to such a degree that it was necessary for God the Father to send an angel to minister to him there. The same thing happened after the testing in the desert.
The Incarnation of the Son of God is the greatest mystery. An unlimited, omni-present, inexhaustible God fit into a tiny embryo and was born in a barn. As an aside, I wonder where that phrase came from. You know, when you forget to close an outside door behind you someone invariably says, “Where you born in a barn?” Well, Jesus was, and he knew to close the door. He closed the door of the ark, didn’t he? Born in a barn. This mystery of God in the flesh will continue to baffle us, but there are times when it makes perfect sense. Someone needed to die in order to pay the penalty of sin. You have to have a body to die.
Emmanuel means, God with us. You can’t get much closer than slipping into our skin and experiencing life as we know it. The Son of God knew what it was like before he was conceived in Mary’s womb, but there is something beyond knowing in Jesus becoming a man. I guess the word might be, endearing. It pulls us in when we consider God’s desire to be with us was so great that he would condescend to be a man. It’s like us deciding to become an ant – or an amoeba. God loves us amoebas.
Jesus wasn’t nervous in the garden. That word does not do justice to what he was going through there. “Sorrowful unto death” were His words on the matter. He was going to be forsaken for a time by God the Father, and when you get even a little sense of how close their relationship is in the Godhead, you begin to understand the blood-sweat. The next time I’m nervous, I’ll pray in the name of the one who went through that much for me. And then to nervousness I will say – “Adios amoeba!”
BJ
The human body is a fascinating construct. We have a central nervous system, and a peripheral nervous system. In the PNS we find the effects of nervousness: sick-to-the-stomach, gas and bloating, or just “butterflies”. It’s amazing that there are memory cells surrounding our guts that replay nervous experiences over again. You can feel woozy just recalling that time you had to speak in front of 100 people. What goes on in our heads and hearts can show up in our bellies and bowels. Our bodies take some of the burdens we carry in our souls.
This is seen in the Lord Jesus when he was in the garden of Gethsemane. He said, “my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death”. As he prayed and considered what would take place on the cross, he went through a physical agonizing that eventually caused a condition called hematidrosis. His sweat glands burst and mixed with blood, and so Luke records that Jesus “sweat as it were great drops of blood.” The anguish in his soul poured out into his body to such a degree that it was necessary for God the Father to send an angel to minister to him there. The same thing happened after the testing in the desert.
The Incarnation of the Son of God is the greatest mystery. An unlimited, omni-present, inexhaustible God fit into a tiny embryo and was born in a barn. As an aside, I wonder where that phrase came from. You know, when you forget to close an outside door behind you someone invariably says, “Where you born in a barn?” Well, Jesus was, and he knew to close the door. He closed the door of the ark, didn’t he? Born in a barn. This mystery of God in the flesh will continue to baffle us, but there are times when it makes perfect sense. Someone needed to die in order to pay the penalty of sin. You have to have a body to die.
Emmanuel means, God with us. You can’t get much closer than slipping into our skin and experiencing life as we know it. The Son of God knew what it was like before he was conceived in Mary’s womb, but there is something beyond knowing in Jesus becoming a man. I guess the word might be, endearing. It pulls us in when we consider God’s desire to be with us was so great that he would condescend to be a man. It’s like us deciding to become an ant – or an amoeba. God loves us amoebas.
Jesus wasn’t nervous in the garden. That word does not do justice to what he was going through there. “Sorrowful unto death” were His words on the matter. He was going to be forsaken for a time by God the Father, and when you get even a little sense of how close their relationship is in the Godhead, you begin to understand the blood-sweat. The next time I’m nervous, I’ll pray in the name of the one who went through that much for me. And then to nervousness I will say – “Adios amoeba!”
BJ
posted by BJ at 4:45 p.m.
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