When the ground crumbled beneath him, when the desperation screamed inside him, when the darkness blanketed around him Jesus stumbled with tortured sound.

Laborious sweat dripped off his brow. Blinding tears streaked from his eyes. The weight of his fate shuddered him violently to the ground.

He did not kneel reverentially with his face aglow and serenely contemplate the luminous Presence of God. No, Jesus was thrown down face down, hands grabbing Gethsemane’s ground—shivering in this revulsion, throbbing on this impalement, striving against this fate.

from A Scandalous Providence