About 3:00 in the afternoon You cried out with a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That’s what it says about you in Matthew 27:46.
About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
I wish I could ask You if You screamed. I’m thinking that’s what “cried out in a loud voice” is getting at.
The moms and dads here know that voice. It’s the one we never heard before, until our child died. It’s that voice. Utter desolation with all the echoes of emptiness since time began. If your insides could be sucked back in time to before you were born, that’s what it feels like.
Does it seem more dignified to assign the phrase “cried out in a loud voice” because it was You, the Son of God, who was doing the crying out? Why can’t it just say “screamed”. I’m convinced You screamed those words, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”.
At what point would there be a more fitting time to scream than being ripped apart from the One you loved the most? Separated, forsaken, bereft. You don’t save the scream for a later event because there’s nothing worse that can happen.
I heard that scream today at about 3:00 in the afternoon. It was coming out of my own mouth.
I was reliving the moment of not saving my son. It all came back to me when I was unable to save another poor little innocent thing that was in my care. It wasn’t even a death involved, just pain, fear, and the unexpected. It doesn’t really matter what it was, something was in my care, calling me for help, and I couldn’t make the pain go away.
Time traveled backwards to 2/8/2020 and the cold cement floor of our garage. It’s alarming how grief can do that to you, it’ll trigger you back into the worst moment of your life. I knew I carried a scream, I just didn’t know how close to the surface it was waiting.
I didn’t stay in that place for very long, though. That’s because there’s another time You called out with a loud voice. Luke the physician, records another scream You made in Luke 23:46-
“Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this He breathed his last.”
It’s the committing of your spirit that saves us all. You trusted God with your being, and won over death when God raised You from it. Did my boy think “into Your hands I commit my spirit” when he breathed his last? Were you there to catch his last breath since You gave him his first one? Did he inhale his next breath in Your presence, filling his lungs with Your Holiness and a peace he’d never known on this earth?
I don’t know when my questions will be answered or when I’ll get to see him again so he can tell me himself. So, I’m going to borrow a line from You. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Help me to make it through this earth and all the grief triggers yet to come. Kiss my boy for me. Tell him I can’t wait to fill my lungs with Your Holiness and then next I’ll come kiss the curls you gave him. Please help all the moms and dads here and kiss their kids. In Jesus name, Amen.
