Good Friday!

When I was a child in Charleston, we would go every Good Friday to the Methodist Church and listen to seven preachers each take one word and do one 30 minute segment.  I would cringe when Daddy would be assigned the word, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"   It, to me, showed that even Jesus lost hope for a few hours when darkness covered the land.  But, I have learned to care about that  word from the cross, more and more, as I age and as bad times have hit me in the stomach.

So why has the word--tough love--
endeared itself to me!  I don't think for a minute that Christ thought that God was abandoning him for all time and I don't think he lost his faith in his mission for a minute.   He thought back to the words he remembered from the Scripture --Psalm 22:1--and he said it to himself when he was feeling the intensity of pain and loneliness on that Cross.   And it gave him the courage to bear another minute of the long hours.

I understand the words.  I sense his humanity in the saying.