"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?" Psalm 22 begins with these familiar words spoken by Jesus from the cross. The psalmist continues for many verses, describing the experience of being desolate, broken, rejected, mocked, and scorned. Yet as horrible as the psalmist's situation is, he does not fall into hopelessness. (Presumably Jesus knows the entire psalm when he quotes its opening.) "The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD."
As a pastor, I often encounter people who have great difficulty speaking words anything like the opening of Psalm 22. For them, to admit feelings of abandonment and hopelessness is a demonstration of faithlessness. But surely this psalm argues otherwise. To deny the times when we experience God's absence in the midst of struggle and suffering is not faith but denial.
It seems to me that this psalm (and presumably Jesus on the cross) are the epitome of faith. To experience the depths of pain and abandonment, to experience a genuine absence of God, but not give in to despair; that is faith. Genuine faith shares the experience of pain and abandonment with God, convinced that God is near. "For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him."
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