“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

It’s hard to imagine a more desperate plea for help than the opening lines of this Psalm, which became the prayer of Jesus himself as he died on the cross.  Christians have long marveled over the eerie parallels between the complaints of this Psalm and the travails of the crucifixion.  The psalm is most often read in churches in the prophetic mode.  We sense that God foreshadowed what he intended to accomplish in Jesus through this prayer, already centuries old when Christ was born.

The psalm stands quite well on its own merits, though.  On modern writer has said that there are really only two prayers in the world:  “Help,” and “Thank you.” Both of these primal prayers find their way into Psalm 22.  The early verse cry out to God in a time of unspeakable anguish.  By 22:29, however, thanksgiving has set in with full force.  As surely as the first 21 verses depict the resurrection, the closing verse give us a piture of resurrection:  new life, new hope.

The psalm ends with a lavish promise:  “Posterity will serve him:  future generations will be told about the Lord.”  Because our God was faithful to deliver the Psalmist from death, he has promised to tell the world of his God’s goodness.