True to the feeling

You know those times when you need someone to look into your eyes and tell you that you are okay? Even as you feel anything but okay, they look at you and speak it. You then have the choice to defy your feelings and believe it.

Abandonment (mostly as it relates to fullness of life and my purpose) has stirred its way into my feelings bucket a time or two. I have felt abandoned, alone, shepherd-less. The Word of God has plainly said I am not abandoned, I am never alone, I have a shepherd. Do I believe it in spite of what I feel? How am I supposed to know that I know?

Jesus said in his dying words on the cross, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” He said to the Father in the garden prior to his capture, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Yes, he bore the sins of the entirety of humanity: past, present, and future.

The excruciating pain and suffering is unimaginable. The Lord is not one who hangs out with sin, He loathes it and will one day kill every ounce of it. So for the Son who is clothed in everything detestable and worthy of eternal punishment, God the Father must turn his face. Why have you forsaken me? The worst thing to ever possibly experience, separation from everything that keeps us alive: separation from God.

You know, it is obvious Jesus felt forsaken. He spoke it. Yet, He knew it was not the lasting truth. He felt it, He acknowledged it, He screamed it as best He could to the Father. But the same Son of God who has shared in the Trinitarian life as He shared in this life, said children of God are never forsaken nor abandoned. We cannot get closer to God than Jesus is and was. So. Perhaps “to feel” forsaken is not equivalent to “being” forsaken.

“Being” as in a lasting condition, as in full truth that evades time and space. “To feel” was not true like God is true. He felt it though, to the deepest extent. The Father turned his face. Yet, feelings are not the lasting truth even if they are all we can recognize.