Forsaken

Discouraged? Need a jolt of energy or assurance that God is with you and will provide for you? How about this: “I have been young, and now am old,” David writes, “yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendents begging bread” (Psalm 37:25).

Of course, David was a King. He had it all. He did not have to worry about where his next meal was coming from, or whether he would have a place to lay his head. And all of his descendents, being the children of royalty, would not have to worry about such things, either.

But even if this were true, David certainly had his fair share of heartache and anxiety. This was the same David who, as he would testify in Psalm 51, nearly had God’s Spirit depart from him because of his grievous double-sin of committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having her husband killed. So David knew a thing or two about the broken road. In fact, this is also the same David who also cried out to God, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:2).

And yet he could still say, with confidence, that he had never seen the righteous forsaken. Even though he, himself, felt forsaken at times, he understood that he most definitely was not. God stuck close by his side.

So what about us? Shall we worry about being forsaken, abandoned, left to fend for ourselves? No, no! A thousand times no! The truth of the matter is, though we may feel forsaken and abandoned at times, we never are—if, for no other reason than the fact that that Messianic Psalm that David cried out in Psalm 22 was fulfilled in the life of Christ. It’s the same Hebrew word as Psalm 37, as Psalm 37! The righteous—or anyone, for that matter—need never be “forsaken” because Christ took upon Himself our forsakenness!

I remember reading The Desire of Ages a long time ago for the first time. I did not get very far in my first reading, but this quotation stood out to me and has always stuck with me: “Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. ‘With His stripes we are healed’ ” (p. 25).

Yes, indeed, Christ was forsaken and abandoned by His Father so that we would never have to be. So why not thank Him for this reality today?