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“My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?”  It was the most gut-wrenching cry of loneliness in history, and it came not from a prisoner or a widow or a patient – it came from a hill, from a cross, from a Messiah.

In Matthew 27:45-46 we read “Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. ⁴⁶And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, have You forsaken me?”

Despair had set in.  Jesus, who had been with God for eternity, was now alone.  Every Scriptural account of the events of the crucifixion confirm Jesus’ full acceptance of His fate and purpose. He withstood beatings and was mocked.  He endured insults and the pain of nails piercing his wrists. He accepted what was coming (Hebrews 12:2).  The Bible makes no mention of any reaction on His part to this suffering.  The physical pain was immense but when God turned His head, that was more than he could handle.  “My God, my God!” he cried. “Why did You abandon me?”

Jesus’ response to this feeling of loneliness and separation from God moved him to do what he had done throughout his earthly ministry – to turn to Scripture.  Although unable to finish verbalizing his prayer, he cries the words of Psalm 22, often referred to as the Psalm of the Cross which begins with “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

In those awful moments, Jesus was expressing His feelings of abandonment as God placed the sins of the world on Him – and because of that had to “turn away” from Jesus. As Jesus was feeling that weight of sin, He was experiencing separation from God for the only time in all of eternity. It was at this time that “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Jesus became sin for us, feeling the loneliness and abandonment that sin always produces, except that in this case, it was not his sin – it was ours.  He loved us so deeply that he was willing to endure that abandonment.

As I reflect on that feeling of abandonment Christ felt while he was on the cross and his prayer of despair, I am drawn to a paragraph in Max Lucado’s book, “No Wonder They Call Him the Savior”…

“I keep thinking of all the people who cast despairing eyes toward the dark heavens and cry “Why”?  And I imagine him.  I imagine him listening.  I picture his eyes misting and a pierced hand brushing away a tear.  And although he may offer no answer although he may solve no dilemma, although the question may freeze painfully in mid-air, he who also was once alone, understands.”

Mj. Shona Pike