My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
—Matthew 27:46
In Gethsemane Jesus prayed to be delivered from the agonizing ordeal coming at him.
Silence.
A few hours later he was impaled on a cross.
“He trusts in God,” slanderers sneered; “let God deliver him now, if he wants to” (Mt 27:43 NRSV).
Silence.
“My God . . . why have you forsaken me?”
Silence.
But three days after they watched him die on Friday, a knot of grieving women peered into his empty tomb on Sunday. “He is not here; he has risen!” an angel said.
You, reader, are in that triumphant story. Jesus is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep . . . in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:20, 22). “Most assuredly . . . he who believes in Me has everlasting life,” Jesus said (Jn 6:47 NKJV).
Neither forsaken nor forgotten,
you are forever forgiven.