Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
When Jesus cried out on His cross, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" (Matt. 27:46), had the Father truly forsaken Him? It seemed so to Him. All His feelings told Him so. Everything was against Him; His "church," His nation, had turned totally against Him. The supposed guardian of civil justice, the government of Rome through Pilate had abandoned Him to mob injustice. Little things that He had said, like, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up" (John 2:19), were being misquoted, distorted, and used against Him, condemning Him as both a fool and a blasphemer.
His entire lifework and career were a monumental failure, it seemed to Him now. He was suffering the quintessence of an experience many Christians have come to know personally as "the Great Disappointment." The very bottom falls out of your "Christian experience" and you start descending into a bottomless pit of darkness and despair. The rent rocks in the earthquake that accompanied the darkness of Calvary were a fit emblem of the state of the mind of the incarnate Son of God--Psalm 22 tells us that He was on the verge of a final collapse of soul, a nervous breakdown (vss. 11-19).
Worse yet, Jesus felt to the core of His being the pain of being forsaken by His own intimate circle. He had called them "My friends" (Luke 12:4). The lovable Peter had cursed and denied Him, and then they all had left Him--alone. Even His faithful mother was suffering her "Great Disappointment" when that giant sword had pierced her soul as Simeon had predicted (Luke 2:34, 35). She was in the greatest shock any woman has ever had to endure. Her whole life was in ruin--the very foundations of her faith in God were shattered; it seemed that she had been deluded from the beginning.
Then on His cross Jesus remembered that He was "a child of Abraham," and He chose to cling to His faith in the New Covenant promises God had made to Him as Abraham's "Seed" (Gal. 3:16). Now, thank God, you can, too.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 6, 2004.
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