Here's something funky, alluded to in Robert A. Fryling's The Leadership Ellipse but something I've never really thought about: when we are feeling abandoned or forsaken by God, we get our language of complaint from Jesus on the cross, who quoted the psalmist saying "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" So Jesus, fully God, can sympathize with our sense of betrayal by God. God accompanies us into our experiences of Godforsakenness. God is our companion even in our sense of abandonment.
Funky. I'm inclined to quote another psalm: "Such knowledge is . . . too lofty to attain."
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If Jesus could not feel forsaken by God, he could never be truly human. And if he didn't ask that "the cup be taken away" he would not be truly human. These are the statements which make the whole notion of the incarnation believable and make it possible to believe that yeah, he really does understand 'cause he's been there too.
This is kind of like "how can God's sovereignty and man's freewill be reconciled?" I don't understand that either. Why would God keep himself concealed, kind of like Jesus walking with the guys on the road to Emmaus, while we're in the middle of our mess, whatever it is. Is it because we reveal ourselves more when we think God is "out of the room"? Maybe the reason he conceals himself is just so we bring to the surface stuff that would never get brought up if we had a constant sense of his presence. We're complicated folks. I'm glad he's more complicated than we are.
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