My God, My God

We do not say this line out loud. We will read it in a service, in a level voice, on the way to the part about the crucifixion, and then go home and pray something more presentable about a difficult season.

David says it as an address. My God, my God, twice, which is what a person does when they are still holding on to somebody who has stopped answering. The second half is worse: why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring. Roaring is an animal word; the same Hebrew is used of a lion. This is not a quiet spiritual difficulty. It is the noise something makes in pain, and the complaint is that it went unanswered.

The next verse takes away the last excuse anyone might offer on God's behalf. O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not; and in the night season, and am not silent. He has not been neglecting prayer. He has been at it around the clock, and nothing came back.

Jesus said this line from the cross, loudly enough for the crowd to mishear it and decide he was calling for Elijah. He knew the psalm, and what he quoted was its opening. What gets done with that, almost every time, is a fast walk down to verse twenty-two, where the psalm turns and the singing starts, and an explanation that he had the ending in mind. Verse twenty-two is twenty-one verses away. He said the first one, and the first one is also Scripture, put in the book so that it could be said.

Which leaves a question, and it is not the one you wanted. Why God is silent is not answered here, and it is not answered later in the psalm either; when the singing does start, no reason has been given. None is coming to you today. The question that is left is smaller and more awkward and it is about your vocabulary. What have you been saying to God instead of verse one, and who taught you that the level voice was the more reverent one?

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 4 is The Same Hands (Psalm 29:11).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two