Gethsemane by Sharon Heagy

 

Photo courtesy of Dallas Heagy

Gethsemane. The word floated in and out of conscious thought as I considered this month’s post. The chorus of the old hymn ‘Lead Me to Calvary’ whispered accompaniment.  “Lest I forget Gethsemane; Lest I forget Thine agony; Lest I forget Thy love for me, Lead me to Calvary.” (Did you sing that line?)

The song was written in 1921 by Jennie Evelyn Hussey at the age of 47. It was perhaps one of the last hymns that William J Fitzpatrick put to music as he passed away the same year. And while there are many stories and lessons to be learned from these two composers, the word Gethsemane left me intrigued.

Gethsemane - or in Hebrew, gat shemanim – means olive press or place where olives are pressed. If you hold olives in your hand, it’s difficult to imagine oil coming out of them, much less enough to fill a bottle. The process from olive to oil reminds me of the process of salvation and the transformative life one lives as a believer in Jesus. 

Olives are picked. “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws them.”[i] The fruit is then washed, just as our sins are washed away in the blood of the Lamb.[ii]  The olives are then crushed, pit and all, before the pulp is pressed, releasing the very best olive oil in the first squeezing. The Potter’s house story, where God shows Jeremiah that He can re-form the pot as He sees fit, and Paul’s 2^nd letter to the Corinthians where he is hard pressed but not totally crushed, came to mind.[iii] The first and best extraction is cloudy and flavourful but the oil will lose both qualities the more it is strained and processed. If it ends up overheating from the friction of the crushing process, it will lose both flavour and quality.

Jesus’ salvation is perfect even though “now we see through a glass darkly.”[iv] There is nothing to be added or subtracted.

But how does the olive oil process relate to writing?

First we pick a topic and a genre, or it seemingly picks us as the Lord directs. Then we write a first draft which will need to be ‘washed,’ getting rid of all the twigs and dirt, cleaning up the copy. Then comes the hard edit, the crushing and slashing of words, phrases, sentences and perhaps entire paragraphs. Then we re-read and re-write, condensing and pressing our work into a publishable piece or just something that can be read and perhaps bless others. The Lord’s hand is on the entire process as we allow, and when He says, ‘It is finished,’ He means it. We should not overthink, overheating our brains and adding or subtracting more than necessary and losing both the ‘flavour and quality’ of our work.

    I am thinking perhaps I need a picture of an olive tree in my writer’s space. It would serve as a reminder of how God grew the tree, the blossoms and the olive fruit. He then took the olives and transformed them into something totally different. He can do that with you and He can do that with me. Amazing. Thanks be to God.

 

 

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[i] John 6:44 NIV

 

[ii] Hebrews 10:10

 

[iii] Jeremiah 18:2-6, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9

 

[iv] 1 Corinthians 13:12

 

Note: The picture above is olive wood my husband obtained in Saskatoon as he has taken up lathe work. The wood will be transformed into many beautiful things as the Lord guides my husband’s hands.