Why God Is Not Distant in Our Suffering
Check out the introduction to this below:
James Ashford
In the midst of our suffering, there is this common belief that God is distant from us and not really activate in our lives. After all, even King David in Psalm 22 said himself at the start "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
But the truth is, this is an illusion we create for ourselves. God stepped into this world in the form of man meaning that God is not distant. After all, we can see from the Gospels, He has entered it. It's a clear demonstration of God’s love for us in such a way that he sent his Son to die on the cross so that our sins can be forgiven.
Those are the actions of a kind and loving God who took on our sin and evil not by sitting in the judge’s seat of the supreme court, but by entering into our world and embracing suffering in a way none of us ever could imagine doing ourselves.
I feel that Hebrews 4:15 spells this out so well: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin."
But revisiting Psalm 22, looking specifically at verse 1, we read "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?"
And, again in Matthew 27:46 we see similar echos. 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?").
Looking exclusively at, Psalm 22:1 and Matthew 27:46 without the surrounding context, it’s tempting to feel a sense of sadness and concussion as these passages show that even Jesus experienced the silence of God. It might be temping to ask,“How could this possibly be?” or“Why would God do this to His own son?”. But we know, as Christians, that this doesn’t reveal the full picture, does it?
There were a few times when we first started dropping my son off at his nursery and he would get genuinely upset when we left. Perhaps he too probably felt that sense of being forsaken or abandoned. But now when we take him, he doesn’t get upset at all. He knows that we will collect him at the end of the day, and he has a fun time. In other words, he had a turning point. He released that he was not forsaken or abandoned after all, and that we love him dearly.
Likewise, King David also has a similar shift in tone too. Verse 3 of Psalm 22 begins with yet. “Yet you are holy,...” and this pattern of despair followed by praise reoccurs in several parts of this passage.
If you look carefully, King David goes through waves where he will go into great detail about his sufferings, followed by a pause. This marked by words like ‘yet you’ or ‘but you’.
A few examples of this include:
- v 6-8 (despair) “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.” followed by v9-10 (praise) “Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.”
- v12-18 (despair) “Many bulls surround me” followed by v19-21 (praise) “But you, Lord, do not be far from me.”
It is clear that these are the words of a man who ultimately knows that God is not distant. In the same way, we can see in Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus’ cry from the cross means that no suffering is unknown to God. Describing the depth of pain and sorrow and loneliness of Jesus on the cross, it may felt like being forsaken or like total abandonment, but it was far from the truth.
As Christians, this is what we hold fast to.
The reality is, God didn’t forsake Jesus. God didn’t abandon God’s son. We know this is the reality, because we know the whole story of the Gospel message. We know about Easter Sunday; we know about the resurrection; We will never be abandoned by God, for we know this is not in the nature of God.
And so, when we fall into those moments of despair, heartache and pain, as we all do at times, we can rest knowing that God doesn’t just observe our pain—He inhabits it. He endured the worst possible suffering which no man could fully endure, and he did this so we could be set free from our sin.
This gives us a reason for hope, as we do not suffer alone. We can say with 100% confidence that Jesus draws near to us in our darkest moments, even when we can’t "feel" it. It's clear from this passage that God’s work, even through suffering, had a purpose. It's a purpose which will not fail.
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James Ashford
