That’s where I am tonight at 11:35 pm.  I promised myself I would be in bed by 10:00 pm and that I would be asleep by 10:30, but here I am in the spare bedroom where I have a computer trying to write this article. Why? Because I need to join you all, at least some of you, for breakfast tomorrow morning. 

I wrote one tonight, but as I was finishing it, I realized it was for March 22nd, not tomorrow.  I planned on writing about the passages I was skipping over in this sermon series as we travel with Jesus from the Mt of Transfiguration to the Gates of Jerusalem.  So, I looked at the wrong gap and finished one reflection, and then I realized my mistake; so, I pulled the sermon series plan and saw that this Sunday’s passage directly followed last week’s. 

Then, I spent another half hour figuring out what to write about.  I thought about the spiritual “Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley.”  I went to YouTube and looked for a good baritone voice singing it, but I couldn’t find one.  As I listened to several, I realized that even though I love the song, I have a theological issue.  The first verse is great:  Jesus walked that lonesome valley. He had to walk it by Himself. O’ nobody else could walk it for Him; He had to walk it by Himself.   Yes, that is right, He had to walk it by Himself because we could not.  The valley could be the temptation of the wilderness that follows His baptism. Each of us would have failed and fallen to temptation. Only the Son of God could walk that valley and emerge victorious over temptation.  Or the Valley of Sin, your sin, my sin that he walked as he hung upon the cross because only one without sin could walk it to make atonement for our sin.

But my hang-up comes with the second verse: We must go and walk that lonesome valley. And so forth.  No, we cannot walk it; only Jesus can walk it.  The song is soulful and beautiful, and I love it, but it’s wrong.  Or am I interpreting it wrong?  If it’s the latter, I need to be corrected; if it’s the former, I must shake its dust from my feet and leave it behind.   Neither is an easy road to walk, but it’s the road before us.

So there.  I’ve either written something or nothing, and it’s almost midnight.  To sleep, I must go so that “In the Morning When I rise…”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rZ8k9m2hwo 

Peace,

Burt