At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, . . . “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Matthew 27:46
I grew up independent and opinionated, but also rebellious and adventurous. My parents quarelled often, so I sought love outside and got married at the age of 22. Through marriage, I was baptised as a Christian but I didn’t really know God or went to church.
I lived a happily married life and had two children. But five years into the marriage, my husband’s cheating broke our relationship and we began to live separately. I put in a lot of effort to save the marriage but everything failed.
With insomnia every night I remembered God and prayed every day asking for guidance. One day when I was packing at home, I saw a Bible and its words comforted me deeply. From then on I began to read it everyday and truly came to know God.
Then, I made up my mind to end the marriage. I fell into depression but I continued to seek God and clung onto Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
As a single mum I worried about raising my children and blamed myself for not giving them a complete family. However, God the Good Shepherd has blessed and provided for me in so many ways; for parents who were happy to help care for my children so I could work in the day, and that my children are very well-behaved.
It’s been many years since I became a single mum, and I look back and realise that God has never abandoned me. He has deepened my relationship with Him, removed my confusion and worries, and allowed the bad things to bring me closer to Him.
Now I’ve returned to church regularly, and because of God’s love, I’m able to let go of the hurt caused by my previous marriage. I’m thankful to have God in my life and I love Him very much!
Where have you felt forsaken in your family life? How has God met you in that forsaken place?
What could be worse than feeling alone in your darkest hour? Yet Jesus felt this very sorrow. From the cross, He cried: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46). He wasn’t only expressing His own dereliction, but He was also voicing the agony of the whole world.
Christ wasn’t speaking off-the-cuff but evoking one of Israel’s prayers (Psalm 22:1). He echoed Israel’s dread that God might forsake them, and He was also praying with us, speaking the same dread each of us face in our own moments of despair. When we lose a child or a marriage fails, we fear God’s absence.
However, it’s precisely Jesus on this lonely cross—and the resurrection soon to follow—that answers our distress. We may feel forsaken, but Jesus reveals the truth: God is always with us, even into death’s valley. We’re never forsaken.
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