We have all felt it. Perhaps it came when a relationship ended. Maybe it was the result of an embarrassing mistake. For some it might even have happened because of you race or culture. Whatever the reason we all know that feeling of loneliness. And at times it becomes something deeper – abandonment, forsakenness.
It is interesting that this sense that we are all alone is such a shared experience. We even share it with the one we most often blame for it, God. God knows what it is like to be rejected by loved ones. God knows what it is like to be forsaken because of mistakes. We see this throughout God's story.
When God first laid the foundations of the world the angels watched on and sang His praises. Then Lucifer chose to reject his natural relationship with God. In the process he convinced a third of the angels to do the same. This would only be the first of God's rejections. Over the course of time rejection followed rejection. Beginning with Adam and Eve, then their son Cain, the Bible documents a steady progression of mankind's continual rejection of God.
Ultimately this rejection and abandonment reaches its climax with Jesus on the cross. Here Jesus quotes so appropriately from Psalm 22 – "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!" It stretches the mind to even try and comprehend how God can place all of the hurt, sorrow and pain caused by sin on a part of himself. In this one act of self-abandonment and isolation God demonstrates not only the depth of His love for us, His creation but also the extent of His willingness to identify with our own forsakenness.
Recognizing that God has been so rejected by His creation, we can find comfort in knowing that he does understand our situation. While we may choose to blame God for our situation it is also very true that we have done the same to Him. And in this strange twist the thing that most separates us also binds us together.
