And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is not a line you'd expect from someone who's supposed to have all the answers. It's raw, unresolved, shouted out loud in front of a crowd, in the middle of the worst moment of his life. There's no tidy theology in it — just the sound of someone who feels genuinely abandoned.
That's worth sitting with if you've ever felt like faith requires you to hide exactly this kind of feeling. Jesus didn't hide it. At the point of ultimate suffering, he said the thing that was actually true for him in that moment, without dressing it up.
If God himself, in human form, could cry out feeling forsaken, then feeling forsaken isn't proof that you're doing faith wrong or that God has actually left. It might be proof that you're in the kind of place Jesus himself once stood — and didn't stay in.
If you've felt too abandoned to bring it to God, it might help to know Jesus said those exact words first.
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.