Crying in the dark with no one to hear. Ever been there?
Alone, betrayed, no way out, no fix it.
That place of forsakenness, of being forgotten.
It is a place of desolation.
Crying in the dark with no one to hear.
That is today.
That is the cry from the cross, My God, My God.
There are those who say that God is rejecting Jesus because he has taken on our sin. Taken on our rejection, our damnation, our well deserved punishment.
Trading places before God’s wrath.
The older reading of the faith is rather different.
There is a trading of places, but it is not God’s punishment that is avoided and passed along to the innocent.
The older reading is that our forsakenness is our own doing, our own distance, our own falling away from all that is good and beautiful and true and alive.
We are caught in an avalanche of self-destruction from which we cannot escape, we are powerless, addicted to the way of death, sliding ever downward.
God takes on that forsakenness and is dragged down to death, and hades and hell, forgotten, forsaken.
A trading of places, yes.
But it is God who suffers, not God who inflicts.
That dark place. Have you ever been there?
Have you been with those who are locked away in that place?
God is there.
It is a holy place, because God is there, finding us.
And God is up to something, something wonderful.
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