Feeling Abandoned
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? ”
“About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). ”
It feels good to be back! Many thoughts and topics have crossed my mind during my time away from blogging - some of them written down, others came and went as fast as I could get my phone out to type it out. Just a heads up - there will be many future posts based on Psalms, given my life is steeped in that book right now. (By the way, we’re only on week 2 of the 90 Days in the Psalms challenge - you can join in at any time!)
We all experienced a Holy Week like none other this year, and maybe, like me, there was a profound impact on the way you viewed each day from Palm Sunday to Resurrection Sunday. One of my more challenging thoughts came in the midst of this past week, on Good Friday to be exact. I found myself at the intersection of Psalms 22, 37 and Matthew 27 with one word highlighted in my mind - FORSAKEN.
Forsaken means to be abandoned or deserted. To me, it’s synonymous with suffering. David spoke of being forsaken by God in a desperate and miserable situation, most likely while he was fleeing for his life. Of course, we know Jesus spoke of such abandonment as He hung on the cross in unthinkable pain. Both were suffering but wondering why God would allow them to endure such a condition.
Then, I crossed a familiar verse 25 of Psalm 37: “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” Wait a minute - the same David who questioned God’s abandonment, said he’d never seen it. And if God doesn’t forsake the righteous, what happened to the only completely righteous man to ever walk the Earth? And what about all the faith-filled, good-hearted people who experience tragedies, hunger, and other sufferings? I myself have felt forsaken by God during certain hardships, and I’m sure some of you have too.
We could look at any difficult situation - a worldwide pandemic, tragic death, terminal illness, chronic illness, personal tragedy - and ask if God has deserted us. In the middle of painful experiences, it feels like it. We, as believers, do know that God will never leave us nor forsake us, and He promises He is with us. But suffering causes doubt; it causes us to question if God is keeping these promises to us.
The answers to our doubts and to David’s and Jesus’ questions of abandonment can only be found by examining the bigger picture. If we only focus on our most painful seasons, a good God won’t seem so good at all. But to look back over the sum of the ups and downs, the best and worst, is to see that He is good after all. In all of David’s misery, the big picture shows that not only did his Godly legacy live on through his son, Solomon, and the construction of the temple, his lineage was the one that birthed the Savior of the world. And as Jesus hung in agony and then succumbed to natural death, the greatest of God’s good plans came to pass - a new covenant which grants eternal life to those adopted into Sonship.
And in our suffering, we too will eventually see the totality of goodness unfold. The righteous are never forsaken, not even in their most painful situations. The moments don’t dictate the plan, the plan dictates the moments. And the plan is good. His purpose is good, His will is good, He is good.