Every Man

 "And they all left Him and fled. Now a young man followed Him wearing nothing but a linen cloth about his body. They seized him, but he left the cloth behind and ran off naked." Mark 14: 50-51

Who are you? You who follow Jesus...Did you follow Him to the Garden? Did you enter into the Garden, or stop on the peripheries; not daring to enter His Agony? Did you stop of your own accord? Or, did an angel prevent you? 

What did you hope to see? To gain?

Olive Garden photo by Betty Parquette

You came near; half naked draped only in a simple linen cloth. Half clothed in the years of shame; barring you from walking in the Garden. 

Is it You who once in distant memory walked with Him in the noon of the day?

Did you once have spiritual intimacy with Him...only to hide from Him in your nakedness?

Did He clothe you? Did He console you with a promise? 

Have you waited these long years for those words; The Word which would give balm to your weary, festering wounds? 

Was your garment of simple linen a foretaste of the swaddling burial bands, having exchanged them for your garments of binding leather; bands which would heal those terrible wounds and not bind?

Did you dare to hope? 

He used to walk with you in that Garden. He clothed you in your shame. He barred you from the Garden 'till the day He would return to it; to fulfill the promise He made you; to me. You met Him there on the peripheries.

When evil hands grasped for you, you ran and hid your nakedness as you once did. 

But He...He was stripped of His clothing. He was flogged for your sin...for mine. 

You were there. You believed in His promise for you, for your beloved, and for me. For every man.

He. The word spoken to you made flesh. He came back to the garden for you...

And you and I and every man have been bathed and clothed in His Mercy. We will walk in the Garden with Him yet again. 

You who fled, who hid, who came back, are every man who hopes for the Third Day.

"For the man and his wife the Lord God made leather garments, with which he clothed them...The Lord God therefore banished him from the garden of Eden...and he stationed the cherubim and the fiery revolving sword, to guard the way to the tree of life." Gen. 3: 21-24

A promise fulfilled for every man who dares to hope.