Lewis wrote a letter to a friend about feeling forsaken by God. He was writing about Jesus' last words to God: "Why have you forsaken me?" and it hit me that Jesus didn't just say that to strategically enable us to feel that he does relate to us. He didn't say it for some deep unfathomable philosophical reason. He truly felt in that moment as if God...his father...his own self...had abandoned him. He didn't retain some divine knowledge in some coolly aloof corner of his brain that God was with him as he lay dying and in torment. There was no reminder "Hey, I'm Jesus, God is always with me. I haven't been abandoned. I know the future!" How could it have been like that and evoked such a desperate cry? How could we truly believe Jesus was ever actually fully Man if we held onto the belief that he knew what was going to happen at all moments in his life...that he saw the future clearly laid out before him at every moment...that in his deepest darkest moments of despair he retained a prescient knowledge of the truth of God's presence. That kind of savior could not have lived the life we live. That all-seeing savior could not truly relate to our feelings of abandonment and despair.
Lewis wrote: "How can we understand [this]? Is it that God himself cannot be man unless God seems to vanish at his greatest need? The "hiddenness" of God perhaps presses most painfully on those who are in another way nearest to him and therefore, God himself, made man, will of all men be by God most forsaken?"
This picture Lewis painted for me of a Jesus who at his greatest moment of need, felt more truly abandoned by God then any of us ever will, gave me hope. Because I know what happened after Jesus died, forsaken and alone. I know that He wasn't ever abandoned. I know that God was both far off and right beside him. And if in the greatest moment of abandonment ever experienced by a human, that human was never actually abandoned to begin with, I know I don't have to despair when I experience those feelings.
Because when we are truly trying to draw near to God...we will experience some of the greatest feelings of abandonment and distance of our lives. It's evidence that we are closer than ever. But when we've convinced ourselves that all is well and we can "just keep swimming," falling into patterns and habits that serve as mind-numbing assurances that we're tight with God, that's when we should be concerned.
