Swallowed Up

When Christ described His suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, the metaphor He used was that of drinking from a cup. In Mosiah, we hear about how the will of the Son was swallowed up in the will of the Father. In Isaiah, we read that death was swallowed up in victory. By swallowing up the bitter cup placed before Him, Christ allowed His will to be swallowed up by the will of the Father. By allowing His will to be swallowed up by the Father, Christ was able to swallow up death itself. Christ surrendered His will and His life over to His Father so completely that death had no more power. Christ may have given up the ghost on Golgotha, but He gave up His life in Gethsemane. Christ is called the Son of God because He did not receive the fullness at first, but grew from grace to grace. Although He never rebelled or cut Himself off from God, nevertheless, as God’s Son, He was still in some ways separate from God. In order to stay sane, we have to divide the world, the universe into us, and everything else. Our brains would explode if we tried to pay attention and care about everything everywhere all at once. This is the bitter cup that Christ had to swallow. He had to, while still in His mortal body, swallow the entire universe, every electron and proton, every bacteria and virus, every ant crawling, every blade of grass, every raindrop and hurricane, every pebble and mountain range, every planet and solar system and galaxy. He swallowed it all. He noticed and paid attention to and cared about and grieved for the whole universe. There was nothing left between Christ’s soul and the universe itself. He had swallowed the universe whole, and allowed the universe to swallow Him up wholly. Christ swallowed up all pain, all misery, all death, and He also swallowed up all joy, all love, and all life. But even Christ did not chug the whole thing in one go. It took Him three tries swallow every last drop of the bitter cup, to completely swallow up His own will with the Divine love for the entire universe and everything therein. God, in His mercy, gives us a lot more than 3 tries. Each week, we have the opportunity to partake of our own cup, to swallow a little more of the universe, to have a little more of our will swallowed up by the will of the Father, to have our pain and our sins and our death swallowed up in the peace and love and life and victory of Christ.