"My God, my God." Though God is not there for him to see or hear, he calls on him still because he can do no other." (F. Buechner "Listening to Your Life" p.98)
The beginning of Psalm 22, the words Jesus is quoted as saying in Mark and Matthew. I've preached that I thought that one of the ways Jesus worked through that agony was to recite the Psalms. Perhaps he started at 1 and only made it to 22. But that cry of my God, my God why has thou forsaken me, is not hard to believe that he said.
When life is at its worst, most people do feel forsaken, ignored or shunned. Often by people they believed they could depend on. And yet in their hour of need no one seemed to care. The cry from the cross would seem to point to Jesus feeling the same way about God. One could focus on the forsaken, and yet he seems to me to be more interested in the my God.
In spite of what he is going through the only thing he could do right then and there is to cry out to God.
I once pastored to a woman in her 30's who was dying of cancer. Another priest had told her to pray Psalm 23 to get through this period. That was fine I told her but how about those days that sucked. Perhaps Psalm 22 might be worth saying.
What I love about the psalms is that they allow us to express our anger towards God, our neighbors and ourselves, but do not allow us to stay angry.
It seems to me that God is big enough to hear us not only when we're in a good mood, but when we're really furious with God as well.
Blessings,
Ed
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