Psalm 22:1-5. David cries out "My God, my God, why hast thou thou forsaken me?" Why are you so far from me? Why do you not answer my groaning and my pain? I call out all day and all night, but I get no answer and no rest. Yet, David says, you are holy. Our fathers trusted in you and were not disappointed. They trusted and were delivered. They cried out to you and were saved. They were not disappointed in their trust.

Oh my gosh, this is me so much! I feel almost bipolar the way I swing from despair and pain to hope and trust. It can happen in the same day, the same hour! Because we have to feel the pain and learn its lessons to be purged of the wrongness in us, it often seems that God is not answering us when we cry out to him. But he is, he always is, he just knows how long the pain and misery has to last for our own and others' good, and that is often so much longer than we are ready to accept. But if we do accept it, and trust him, he will give us the strength and grace to get through it. In the midst of the pain and the calling out to him, I remember this, just like David does here, and I am comforted. I remember all the good, wonderful things he has done and how he always saves me in the best way possible. Then I feel the joy and the consolation, even in the midst of the pain.

This again is the dual nature of things that I keep encountering - the pain and the joy exist together. They are each necessary in order to have the other fully realized. That is why it feels bipolar - my brain has to learn to synthesize the two and live with them together, and I think it is starting to.

Jesus himself cried out these words from the cross. They reminded all the Jews present at the crucifixion of this psalm and showed that he was indeed the fulfillment of the promise to David. But these words also were real - Jesus really felt this way - abandoned, in agony, alone. He suffered so much! He has suffered with us and for us. He felt what David felt, what we all feel, but he also was the fulfillment of the true hope, he was the deliverer. His agony brought about the joy of our redemption (and he felt that joy, too!).

Agony and joy live together for eternity in the crucifixion and Resurrection, and Jesus felt them both - with and for all of us.