From The Garden to The Cross — My Next Book Project

One of my 2021 goals is to finish writing my third book (to be published in 2022). Unlike my first two books that explore freelancing and entrepreneurship, this next one will shift topics entirely towards the life of Jesus.

Specifically, From The Garden to the Cross will focus on Jesus’ moments in the garden of Gethsemane to his death on the cross at Golgotha. My original idea was to explore what we can learn about finishing well from Jesus’ journey but I’m open to seeing how the project may evolve in an unexpected direction as it’s written.

Unlike my first two books, where I had numerous ideas, insights, and stories to share but lacked the structure to shape it at the beginning, I’m now approaching this book from the opposite angle. I’ve got the idea — Jesus’ journey from the garden to the cross — and the structure from the events that unfold in the biographies (gospels) about Jesus, but I don’t yet know what will be the content of the book. With that said, I've got some starting guidelines for the book.

First, I’d like the book to act as a bridge for people to find and discover Jesus and these events for themselves. If it makes these historical accounts more accessible or creates intrigue to explore them directly, I’d consider that a win.

Another objective is for me that to make Jesus’s journey practical for our own life challenges. Jesus not only gives us life, but he also modeled life. In the escalating darkness of his journey, we can learn a great deal as we face the suffering in our own lives.

On the flip-side, we also receive a mirror into our own souls as we see how Jesus was treated throughout the process. In the same story of Christ’s redemption of us is a powerful picture of why we need that redemption. We are the disloyal followers, hateful religious leaders, and violent Romans (and yet he still loved and saved us!). For those that know, redemption is available. For those that see themselves as good and above that horror, perhaps I can help them to see their need for redemption (and how amazing it is).

As I trek on this unknown and exciting journey ahead, I expect to learn and grow in unexpected ways. If you have any resources that would aid my journey, or if you’d be interested in participating in the early reading feedback stage, let me know!

Below, is my drafted introduction to the book and an early mock book cover.

A Divine Intervention

Endings surface crystal clear clarity.  

Crisis reveals character. Truth delivers reality. Tragedy points to the problem.

Humans, lacking an answer to this recurring and inter-generational downward spiral, are left with despair, destruction, and death.

Thank God He intervened!

His surprising intervention culminated in human history’s worst tragedy, an innocent and tortured Jesus nailed to a cross. While God became Human, he submitted himself to the inevitable ending that came at the hands of humans who elevate themselves to be God.

This was not new to humans, as the practice of self exhalation and subverting God’s authority happened throughout history from the moment we were created.

What was new, or at least new to most of us, was that what we would do to Jesus on the Cross was what we had been doing to him all this time… “as you do unto the least of these, you do to me.”

Simply put, you mess with God’s kids and you’ve messed with God. We humans are His children, a family at war with each other.

God provides a solution for us to escape our destructive descent but for us to understand, appreciate, and accept it requires that we dive deep into the problem.

In the following pages of this book, we will explore a monumental moment in history that changed everything, for everyone, forever.

As we study Jesus’ journey from the garden of Gethsemane to the cross on Mount Calvary we’ll receive a powerful picture of ourselves and of God. It is these two pictures contrasted that will reveal to us the core human problem, our wonderful loving Creator, and the amazing story where God did not leave us to our destructive fate, but instead delivered a blow to our death as part of His redemptive rescue of us all. It’s a beautiful rescue we can all choose to enthusiastically embrace or actively resist.

Before we jump into the story with Jesus in the garden, let me illuminate some of the preceding backstory that drives us to the garden moment that we’ll soon enter into together.