Morning, April 15
Go To Evening Reading
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Psalm 22:1
We here behold the Saviour in the depth of his sorrows. No other place
so well shows the griefs of Christ as Calvary, and no other moment
at Calvary is so full of agony as that in which his cry rends the
air—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” At this moment physical weakness was united with acute mental torture
from the shame and ignominy through which he had to pass; and to make
his grief culminate with emphasis, he suffered spiritual agony surpassing
all expression, resulting from the departure of his Father’s presence. This was the black midnight of his horror; then it was
that he descended the abyss of suffering. No man can enter into the
full meaning of these words. Some of us think at times that we could cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There are seasons when the brightness of our Father’s smile is eclipsed by clouds and darkness; but let us remember that
God never does really forsake us. It is only a seeming forsaking with
us, but in Christ’s case it was a real forsaking. We grieve at a little withdrawal of
our Father’s love; but the real turning away of God’s face from his Son, who shall calculate how deep the agony which
it caused him?
In our case, our cry is often dictated by unbelief: in his case, it
was the utterance of a dreadful fact, for God had really turned away
from him for a season. O thou poor, distressed soul, who once lived
in the sunshine of God’s face, but art now in darkness, remember that he has not really forsaken
thee. God in the clouds is as much our God as when he shines forth
in all the lustre of his grace; but since even the thought that he has forsaken us gives us agony, what must the woe of the
Saviour have been when he exclaimed, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”