The Agony of Abandonment
Psalm 13:1 – “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?”
Reading: Psalm 13
It is incredible how many people suffer from loneliness, even in the midst of friends, family, and a church community. Yet there is something worse than being lonely, and that is to feel abandoned. You may have read heart-breaking accounts of children, hostages or prisoners of war who have been left behind and alone, wondering if anyone will do anything to help. Maybe you can relate to that kind of despair.
Abandonment is the height of David’s lament in Psalm 13. In verse one he cries out: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” David was hurt, vulnerable, discouraged and fearful. It must have been terrible. Abandonment is agonizing precisely because it involves the betrayal of a trusted bond. In a relationship there is always an expectation of love and attention, yet David’s cry expresses his fear that God has rejected him.
Have you ever felt this way before? Perhaps you have had to endure something very difficult that has left you struggling. In this life people are often powerless to help us, and even loved ones fail us. Yet to feel abandoned by God is the worst agony, since without him there is no hope.
By the end of this psalm David’s cry had changed from despair to praise. How was this possible? In verse 6 he says: “But I have trusted in your steadfast love.” That is the key! It is the promise of God’s love that sustained David even as h
e cried out in agony. Trusting in God took faith, and that is our calling as well. Yet unlike David, we know that God has now proven his steadfast love in the most wondrous way, with the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. No human being has ever had a more reasonable expectation of God’s ongoing care and support than his eternal Son. Yet Jesus suffered the ultimate horror of abandonment, expressed so graphically in his cry from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt.27:46). He was abandoned so that we never would be.
Sometimes it is hard to see exactly how God is caring for us, and we may at times feel abandoned by the LORD, as David did. But in faith we trust in God’s love and hold to his precious promises. For in Christ he says to us: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb.13:5).