Take This Cup Away.

It is yet another beautiful Easter; a long holiday, finally. Time to rest. And this extra time got me thinking about something:

THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE

Sometimes scripture reads like a fairytale, so let’s try to paint the scene.

Jerusalem is fully packed. It is just around 10–12 PM, just after the Passover; a celebration highly regarded, think of it as Christmas and Independence Day wrapped in a spiritual revival, but with political tension underneath. There is joy, there is deep meaning, and there is one shared memory at the centre of it all: freedom from slavery in Egypt.

Families are gathering. Homes are filled with aunties, uncles, cousins, and grandparents, everyone talking over each other like no time had passed. Meals are being prepared carefully, different hands cooking, tasting, adjusting each dish until it feels just right. Elders take their place, telling the same stories again, and somehow everyone still listens. Voices rise together, some strong, some off-key, but all carrying the same joy, the same memory.

There is a strong sense of identity: this is who we are. Gratitude: God delivered us. Hope: He can do it again.

But for Jesus, the night air feels thicker than it should.

Jerusalem is quieter now, but not silent. Distant footsteps. A dog barking somewhere far off. The faint rustle of olive leaves shifting in the wind. None of it settles Him. He knows what is coming, not in fragments, not in guesses, but in full: the betrayal, the hands that will bind Him, the faces that will turn away, the pain, not just of the body, but something deeper, something heavier. A separation He has never known.

He steps into the garden, a place that should feel familiar. Tonight it does not comfort Him. His chest tightens. He tells the disciples to stay and watch, but even as He speaks, He can see it, the heaviness in their eyes, the confusion. They don’t understand. How could they? He barely has the words for it Himself.

He moves a little further. Alone.

And that is when it hits fully. Not just the fear of pain, but the weight of the cup, everything it holds, every sin, every consequence, every moment of separation. It presses against His soul until He feels like He might collapse beneath it.

He falls to the ground. There is no formality left in Him now.

“Father… if it is possible…” The words struggle out, raw, unfiltered.

“Take this cup away from me.”

For a moment, just a moment, He lets Himself feel it fully: the desire for another way, a different ending, a path that does not require this.

The betrayal was not only Judas’ kiss, or the soldiers’ chains, or the looming cross. It was also the quiet abandonment of those He loved most, the disciples who could not stay awake, who could not carry even a fraction of the weight with Him. These were the ones He trusted, the ones He had poured Himself into, the ones He had called friends.

I recognize that fear.

The fear that the people I love, the people who have always shaped my world, might turn away once they see my truth. That those I trust to understand might not. The betrayal of absence, the betrayal of silence, it is a shadow that follows many people who experience same sex attractions, just as it followed Him in that garden.

We all arrive at a moment of take this cup away. For me, it has been the gay-cup. I prayed it might go away. I cried. I fasted. I cried some more. But the cup was not lifted.

Just as Jesus stood in the garden, staring into the full weight of what it would cost Him, the betrayal, the abandonment, the unbearable reality of carrying sin and tasting a separation from God He had never known, I find myself standing in that tension too. Not the same cross, not the same burden, but the same kind of fear that grips the soul: the fear of being cut off, the fear that what I carry might place me outside the reach of the God I love.

The quiet terror that my existence could be something to be rejected. And in a world where being same sex attracted can cost you belonging, community, even safety, that fear is not abstract. It is daily. It sits in your chest and follows you into your prayers.

And yet, like Him, in the middle of that crushing weight, in the middle of the questions and the silence, I am still here. Still choosing. Still wrestling my way toward God, whispering through everything I feel:

Not my will, but Yours.

The night does not change. The cup does not disappear. But something comes, not relief, not escape, just strength. Quiet. Steady. Enough to stand again.

Asking for the cup to be taken is the easy prayer. Asking that His will take place in us, that is the one that costs something. And so today, after all the heaviness, after all the wrestling, I pray that we find it in ourselves to mean it:

Not my will. Yours.