His sacrifice of loneliness...

My lent reading from the other day came from Mark 15:33-34. This is Walter Wangerin’s refection from his book “Reliving the Passion”.

"My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Who answers him?
The thunder is silent. The city holds its breath. The heavens are shut. The dark is rejection. The silence is worse than death. No one answers him. No, not even God. Not even God, his Father, because he who has become hateful in his own eyes now is hateful likewise to God, his Father. Jesus. Him. It is against him that heaven has been shut. In this terrible moment of storm, the loss of light for humanity is at once the loss of love and life for its Christ. He has entered the absolute void. Between the Father and the Son now exists a gulf of impassable width and substance. It is the divorce of despising. For, though the Son still loves the Father obediently and completely, the Father despises the Son completely because he sees in him the sum of human disobedience, the sum of it from the beginning of time to the end. He hates the Son, even unto damning him… and this, precisely is the bitterest drop in the cup: that, crying down eternity unheard, separated absolutely from God – the God he cannot help but love even still – Jesus in Hell… Hell is eternal. And he has descended into Hell.”

And I reflect… sometimes I’ve wondered if Jesus really understands my loneliness, truly knows the deep and echoing pain of soul isolation. Now I feel a bit ridiculous. He knew lifetimes of loneliness in that small window of time, those few days, that I will NEVER know or ever be able to understand. WOW! So amazing, that He would choose that cup, choose to make that sacrifice.

O Lord God, I can never fully understand your sacrifice but I am so so so incredibly grateful that because of your sacrifice, I don’t have to walk alone.

* Photo courtesy of Tracey L Heppner Photography.