Why Have You Forsaken Me?

Good evening, everybody. What a privilege it is to be in the house of the Lord, worshiping and praising Him, giving Him the praise and adoration that He deserves. When we were praying before, Amal said this in his prayer, what a privilege it is that we get to come so freely. We have a formal setting usually for encounter, but to just have this freedom to come together at houses, to be able to do this, to worship Him, to glorify Him, it’s frankly a privilege that we take for granted so much. But thank God for His grace, for His provision.

We are continuing our series on the 10 questions Jesus asked. And today we’re going to have a discussion about a very interesting question. I would debate if it actually is a question, but we’ll get to that soon enough. But the question that we’re going to talk about today is, Jesus saying, why have you forsaken Me?

Now, as I got to do more prep for this, I realized this is such a complex thing. It’s so highly debated, even among theologians about what actually happened here. What did Jesus mean? What was Jesus saying here? That, you know, it’s led to debates. It’s led to a lot of confusion. And for me personally, it kind of dived down to a very simple message, a message that we’ve heard over and over again. But the Holy Spirit led, very powerfully led me in this, as I think of this as a very multi-faceted answer to this specific statement or this question that Jesus asked.

So for our reading, we go to Matthew 27:46. At about three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lemma sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

To even contextualize this is not something that I really need to do because we all know about the crucifixion, right? We know exactly what the context is. It’s a very somber, very dark, it’s literally darkness around at this time. And it really got me wondering about, you know, we hear about heroic figures, religious figures, historical figures who have, you know, whose deaths are recorded. And you always want your hero to die in, you know, either in war in a very heroic way or die in peace, saying something, for some reason, saying something very profound right before they die. And here, it really is a very, very somber passage here. It’s so unheroic where if a person were to look at it from out of the context of being a Christian, about what is happening here, you would almost think this is so pathetic. Jesus, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, hanging from a cross and crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And when you compare it, it almost feels, wait, what, why, why is he saying this? What is happening here?

And this is something that, as we go through this, it might not be very conclusive, what I say, but I hope that the things that we learn from these passages that we’re going to discuss truly, truly does convict us.

Before we go into the crux of this, does any of us know how many times Jesus said something on the cross? How many sayings, seven, right? There were seven sayings on the cross. And so when we compare the gospel accounts, we know that Jesus spoke these things while on the cross.

First, he said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they’re doing.

Second, he tells one of the rebels who was crucified with him, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Third, he told his mother, woman, behold your son, and he tells his disciple, John, behold your mother.

Fourth, he cried out. And the statement that we’re going to talk about today, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Fifth, he says, I am thirsty.

Sixth, he exclaimed, it is finished.

And seventh, and finally, he cries out, Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.

There is something really fascinating, especially about this as I read through a lot of commentaries. And the fact that this particular statement, Eli, Eli, lemma sabachthani, which is an Aramaic phrase, is written here by Matthew. And we see it even in Mark. When compared to the common Greek that they actually wrote in, it makes you wonder, wait, why is this particular thing written in Aramaic when everybody at that time, or he’s writing to a Greek audience? And most of the commentaries say that, hey, it points to eyewitness history. It shows credibility that Jesus actually did say something like this.

But to a greater extent, what I’ve learned and what really touched me is the fact that even to readers, just maybe to the near future of Matthew and Mark writing this, or even to the readers today, we look at this statement, Eli, Eli, lemma sabachthani, and it’s an automatic indicator. Hey, Psalm 22:1 says the same thing. It’s the fulfillment of Psalm 22. We’ve gone through this back at the gym, if you remember this. But Psalm 22 was a messianic psalm written by David, and it almost gives out a script about what is actually happening here as Jesus is being crucified. We see verses like verse 1, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me and from the words of my groaning? We see in later verses about how the man is insulted, how he is jeered. We even go to this prophetic statement in Psalm 22:18. They divide my clothing among them and cast lots for my garment. All of this being fulfilled right there at Jesus’s death, Jesus’s crucifixion.

All of this to prove what? That Jesus indeed is God. He was fully God, and he knew exactly what was going to happen. It’s not like this is a question that needs an answer. He knows what is going on here. He knows that he needed to be crucified. John 18:4, Jesus says, Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked them, who is it that you want? Matthew 26:53-54, do you think I cannot call on my father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way? Jesus knew exactly what was going to happen. So it wasn’t a cry of despair. It wasn’t a cry of distress, even if it seems like it to the outside person. Jesus didn’t need to know the answer to the question of, oh, why am I forsaken?

And that’s why I want to bring out this first point of emphasis here, especially when it comes to the statement declaring that Jesus is God and that this intentional alignment serves as a powerful testament to the meticulous planning of God throughout history. It reminds us that Jesus is fully God. There are so many things that we get out of this, right? Jesus is fully God, and yet he was fully human. And it’s so hard to comprehend. But this deity, the deity that he had, it’s so profound here. And as I said, it is the fulfillment of the scripture. Jesus was God. Every event that had happened in the Old Testament, we go from the Old Testament to the prophecies. From the New Testament, everything points to Jesus Christ as God.

If you’d allow me to go on a tangent here, it’s so easy for us to look at stories. And I think it’s probably more something that we’ve seen now, a lot of it. And that is to look at stories from the Bible, historical events that have happened in the Bible, and almost make it more poetic or more pleasing to the modern ear, like the event of David defeating Goliath ends up being a message about, hey, God allows us to face the giants in our lives, to conquer the giants in our lives. And I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I wonder if we lose the essence of certain verses like that. Let’s go to something more specific about Jesus calming the waves and the winds becomes a message about, yes, Jesus can calm the anxieties, the sorrows in my heart, in my life. Again, can he do it? Absolutely, he can. But I wonder, again, if you’re losing the essence of what is being said here.

Jesus, when he’s calming the waves and the winds, the disciples around him, they’re not looking at Jesus and saying, oh, yes, he can calm the storms and waves in my heart, too. He can calm the anxieties that I have. No, they were absolutely bewildered, scared, astonished at the fact that there was somebody who would do this. They’re saying, who the heck is this guy? And he is able, that the winds and the waves are obeying him. So that’s why I want this to be such a point of emphasis here. And it is the fact that everything here and everything in the Bible points to Jesus as God. Some of my favorite verses, John 8:56-59. Your father, Abraham, rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day. He saw it and was glad. But they said, you are not yet 50 years old, and you have seen Abraham? Very truly, I tell you, Jesus answered, before Abraham was born, I am. Jesus is God, fully God. It’s not a question that is being posed here that needed a particular answer. First, Jesus is fully God, and that’s what this statement tells me.

Now, if I were to say that this question, this statement, was purely and solely for the fulfillment of scripture and Psalm 22, I think I’d be grossly undermining the physical toll it took on Jesus. Just the crucifixion, one of the worst ways to be punished at that time. And we know that he went through physical anguish. Matthew 26:38-39. Then he said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me. Verse 39, going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, my father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will. We see, this might be more spiritual anguish right here, but we see the amount of the toll it took on Jesus. As he’s praying these prayers, being punished, being whipped, being spat upon. The amount of physical anguish it took on a person. Just imagine as a human being going through all of that. Jesus went through all of that.

And the second point of emphasis for me here is this. His cry on the cross not only resonates with the authority of God, but also authentically reflects the raw and genuine pain of humanity, demonstrating the profound duality of Christ’s nature. Jesus was fully God. He was also fully human.

I would say one of my favorite memories is, and it’s a privilege that I was able to travel to Israel with my parents. And I don’t remember a lot of things, but one thing that still sticks to my memory is when we were walking through the streets where, the location said that these were the streets where Jesus had to carry the cross into Golgotha. I believe the Catholics call it the 14 stations of the cross. But regardless, even if it was not the location, it was just the tangible feeling of being there, right? Being there, knowing, wow, I’m close to where Jesus suffered, all of that. And after this tiring walk that we have, we go to the burial place of Christ and there’s a shelter, there’s a shelter right very close to the burial place. And I remember so fondly, all of us, all the people in the group, we all together, we were taking the Holy Communion, the Lord’s table there. And I remember, I think I was just baptized for a year at that point. I remember for the first time in my life, I’ve cried a lot during worship, for sure, but taking that communion, I could not stop crying. I was weeping, I was bawling, I could not control my tears because it just felt so much more tangible over there, knowing the physical anguish of what my Savior went through, of what my Jesus went through. And I am here. And for so long, I think, even if I had only been baptized for a year at that point, communion was another one of those rituals for me. And being there and having to go through that really gave me so much perspective.

And the humanity of Christ here, why I wanna emphasize it again, is that it is a huge, it is an incredible reminder for us. Why is Jesus’ humanity so important for us? I keep wondering about Jesus’ mindset. Historians, even a lot of theologians, I’ve wondered too, where is Jesus’ Father when He starts His public ministry? And I’m not gonna speculate or anything, but most historians believe that Joseph, Joseph Jesus’ Father dies before His public ministry begins. And it makes you wonder, right? Even before the public ministry began, Jesus had the power to raise His Father back. Why didn’t He do it? Why didn’t He do a lot of things? He faced ridicule in His own town. His mother, Mary, must have been insulted, jeered, forbearing Him before marriage. And just the amount of things that Jesus could control, being fully God, and yet He was willing to submit Himself to His Father’s will.

A question that’s posed a lot, especially in social sections like this, right? Why did Jesus have to live 30 years of obscurity? It feels like we see Jesus reach teenage and we don’t know what happens, right? Why did Jesus have to wait 30 years? Why did Jesus, why is there no account of what He did or all of this? And there’s this beautiful verse in Hebrews 4:15. For we did not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet, there’s a thing, yet, He did not sin. That’s what Jesus’ humanity teaches me. He did not sin. Why the 30 years of obscurity? In those 30 years, the 33 and more years that He was on earth, what is one definitive thing that we know from the Bible itself is that Jesus lived a sinless life. And that, and this is so beautiful, and that sinless life has been credited to our account. Right? On the cross, God looked at Christ and He saw you. And now He looks at us and He sees Christ. That is a profound mystery. That is a profound message right there.

Philippians 2:6-8, talking about Jesus, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage. Rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. And so the cry in Matthew, once again, points to His complete humanity, fully God, yet He was fully human. Still so hard for me to comprehend. But in His complete humanity, He did not only give His life for our redemption that can only be done by the Lamb of God, but He showed us that we can live like He did. He became the ultimate role model for us. Why can we not wait for a promise to happen? Why can we not wait for certain things to happen? Right there is the answer. From the life of Jesus, we have the answer. If Jesus could wait, why can’t you? Why can’t we wait?

So we have the deity of Christ, we have Jesus, who is fully God, and we have the humanity of Christ. And now we get to the murky section, the more complex place about, oh, was Jesus separated from the Father? Was Jesus actually forsaken? Was, so many, so many questions that when you keep pondering, when you keep thinking about it, it just makes you go on a loop.

But I do want to point out something, and you can check and research, and you can check if I’m wrong, but I believe it is the only time of which we have record, this verse of which we have record that Jesus did not address God as Father. He did not say Father. He says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Many of us have heard the message and we continue to hear, right? Because the Son had taken sin upon himself, the Father had turned his back. And one theologian compares it in this sense. He says, he did not cease to be the Son, Jesus, he did not cease to be the Son any more than a child who sins severely against his human father ceases to be his child. Did Jesus for a while cease to know the intimacy of fellowship with his heavenly Father when compared in heavenly terms, compared in earthly terms, sorry, just as a disobedient child ceases for a while to have that intimate, normal, loving fellowship with his human father. Even to our own personal extent, something that I believe I discussed with Pastor Sonu and he gave me this example also of us just feeling distant from God after probably sinning or after a long time of not praying, of being in constant communion with Christ, with God in prayer, reading the Word. We feel that distance. And that’s how it almost is compared here.

But again, when I say I cannot give you a definitive answer, I mean it, because this mystery is so great and so imponderable, so hard to fathom, that there is an account that says from history that the 16th century form of Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther, is said to have gone into seclusion for a long time trying to understand it, understand this very statement, and he came away as confused as when he began.

And so what we have right here is that we enter into the most unfathomable mystery of the Gospel. No one can really know what was involved in God forsaking Jesus during those three hours of darkness, but Jesus bore God’s curse upon world sin. And that somehow God, in His holiness, was forced to turn His back upon His Son while He bore that sin. Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God, knew no sin, but was made sin on our behalf. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says this very thing. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

He bore God’s wrath, which we deserved, which we completely deserved. And the text says He was forsaken by God the Father. And while the physical agony indeed was terrible, right, the amount, the things that He had to go through, He was whipped, He was spat upon, He was nailed, He was, the sheer amount of inhumane acts that happened during the crucifixion, it’s just so hard, it’s just so hard for us to explain because we’ve, I really hope none of us will ever have to go through it, right? But can you imagine the spiritual agony? The agony must have been infinitely worse.

To think about this, we humans, we as people over here, we would have such a difficult time trying to grasp this very thing. We don’t know what it is like to live in such a relationship. God the Father, God the Son, we don’t know what it is like to live in such a relationship. Let alone for all of eternity. Probably the closest thing we can think of is marriage, but something like this is not something that we can understand, something that we cannot fathom because we’re not sharing His holy nature. We cannot imagine what it was like for Jesus to become sin. But that is exactly what happened on the cross. And thus, Jesus faced the full burden of God’s wrath. The weight, the full weight of God’s wrath.

And again, here’s the wrath of God part. Why is this being emphasized again and again? Because God detests sin. He abhors sin. When we even look at the scriptures, Isaiah 59:2 says, but your iniquities have separated you from your God. Your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear. If you go to Psalm 5:4-5, for you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness. With you, evil people are not welcome. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence. You hate all who do wrong. Such strong language.

I’m reminded of statements like, and we hear this pretty often, God loves the sinner but hates the sin. I’m not here to say that it’s exactly wrong, but it is very misleading when we look at scriptures like these. I almost feel like it comes under the category of us trying to help out God, especially when we’re trying to speak to the modern generation. And there are elements of this revelation of God that are so difficult for us to understand, to take. And one of these is any time we associate the word hate with God, right? It’s so hard for us to do that, but we have it so clearly in scripture.

So if we could not take the brunt, the weight, the sheer weight of God’s wrath, then there was only one person who could. And that is exactly what happened here. In and of himself, we know that Jesus was an innocent man. He was innocent in every sense of the word, blemishless. But he voluntarily took the transfer of the sins of his people and became the Lamb of God for them. And once God imputes that wickedness, imputes or attributes that wickedness, the wickedness of all of the sins of God’s people to the person of Christ. And for that moment, for that very moment, we see he was, Jesus was the most obscene thing in all of creation because there concentrated at him on the cross was the corporate wickedness of us all.

I mentioned this in the passing about statements like, well, was Jesus actually separated from the father when this happened? Was, did Jesus cease to be the son of God? Was Jesus actually forsaken? Was Jesus, did Jesus become a sinner on the cross? So many things, so many, so many statements that go over and over and over. And in my own preparation, I’m going over these things searching the internet, doing my own prayers. Holy Spirit, what exactly is happening here? I do not understand what exactly is happening here. And you know, when the Holy Spirit speaks, it’s very distinct. You know it’s the Holy Spirit speaking. When I hear this voice, hey, Andrew, you’re missing the point. You’re missing the point. You’re trying to draw conclusions for a question that isn’t looking for an answer.

We try everything and anything to somehow point everything else, point to everything else. But we forget to look at the cross and what it means. There’s this picture that I have right here. In 1633, the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn painted the raising of the cross. And this painting, it shows many hands pushing and pulling the large wooden cross, the large wooden cross raised into its place. And the body of Jesus is already attached to the cross with spikes on both his hands and his feet. And Jesus is being raised so that he may undergo his punishment of death by crucifixion. But if you look at the painting, something stands out very clearly. You see the crowd, you see the soldiers, and you see right here, there’s a man who just looks differently from everybody there. That is, it is our sins that nailed him to that cross. And I wonder if we make that personal enough for us.

This statement, this question that we’re going through today itself, it’s of no consequence if all we’re doing is participating in meaningless theories, debates, conspiracies, because they diminish the work of the cross. It was my sin which put Jesus on the cross. It was my sin that put Jesus on the cross. I can say all that I want. I was raised as a Christian from when I was very young. I knew all the truths. I used to memorize Bible verses. I’ve never done many of the gross outward sins the people of the world commit. It’s easy for me to think that I am not as bad a sinner as these people are, as the world is portrayed to be. But the more I grow as a Christian, the more I grow, the more I discover how utterly wicked my heart is. The way to holiness, I believe I’ve said this before, is not thinking more highly of myself, but rather realizing more how sinful I am, which drives me to cling more tightly to that cross, where I receive God’s mercy. His incredible mercy.

It’s not popular in our day to emphasize our sinfulness, right? We usually desire an upbeat message that glosses over sin, that really doesn’t put sin in the forefront of any of it. So this glimpse of the cross should impress upon me and you the greatness of our sin, along with the greatness of Christ’s love.

And this is also where I want to bring out my third point of emphasis, my final point of emphasis. The sinless Son of God willingly bore the forsakenness that rightfully belonged to us, standing in our place to reconcile humanity to God and pay the ultimate price for our sins. Nobody else could do this. Why did Jesus say something like that? Fulfill Scripture, showed us humanity, but it doesn’t matter if you’re looking at it in any other sense. The message of the cross is so simple. He paid the ultimate price for my sin.

Evil and godless men crucified the Lord Jesus, but they did it in accordance with the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. And so in one sense, it was indeed the sovereign plan of God which put Christ on the cross. He needed to be forsaken so that we will be reconciled. And so to me, this question, this statement by Jesus highlights His deity, His humanity, and ultimately and most importantly, His incredible love for me.

I mentioned Psalm 22 before. We even read Isaiah 53, the various things that Jesus had to go through. Verses one through 21 show us how Christ suffered on the cross for our salvation. But the psalm does not end on the defeat of the crucifixion. It goes on to the victory of the resurrection and the glories which follow. Let me read those final verses for us. Verses 28. For the kingship and the kingdom are the Lord’s, and He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship. All those who go down to the dust will bow before Him. Even He who cannot keep His soul alive. Posterity will serve Him. They will tell of the Lord to the next generation. They will come and declare His righteousness to a people yet to be born that He has done it. And it is finished. A very hopeful ending to that. And I don’t need to reiterate that, right? So we know of the resurrection. We know of the ascension. We know that Jesus is coming again.

But this message, what I want us to conclude and what really struck me is also to go really into careful reflection. What love the Father has lavished on us that we could be called His children. 1 John 3 says that. And I ask myself, and I want to ask us the same question here too. Do we take it for granted? The love of Christ, something that we hear, that we’ve heard from when we were so young. We’ve heard the word love again and again and again. The love of Christ, the sacrifice of Christ. What is being paid? Do we take it for granted?

I love using sports examples, metaphors. So especially when it comes to a sermon like this. This might not be a great example, but regardless. It always astounds me, the fact that we have athletes who play into their 40s like Tom Brady, like I guess LeBron James is considered old now, so LeBron James. We have soccer fans here, Lionel Messi. We have all these great athletes and if you remember Joel’s sermon from the last series we did, he did the whole thing about the GOAT debate and all that. And GOAT means the greatest of all time to those of us who don’t know. And it really got me thinking, and this is something that we sports fans, we’ve seen this, we see it in public, we see it in social media, we see media, we see these players are so critiqued. We look at individual statistics, we look at all these parameters. And the thing is, in all of that, again, what we see is their legacies. All of them, they’re not marred, but the thing is what social media, what media makes it so hard for us to understand is the fact that, or let’s say that there’s this constant debate about who’s better, or this player, he’ll never be as good as this player, he’ll never be as good as that player. It’s always this constant need to debate, to bring up other stuff, bring up other things, all of that into this debate that we fail to recognize the greatness of these athletes, of these singular athletes. Who cares if he just scored 10 points? I wish I could do that when I’m 38, 39 years old. But we see that as time passes on, we expect this greatness, we expect perfection, and we’re somehow numb to the greatness of these athletes.

And even if it is repeated over and over again, the message of the cross, the message of love, we keep hearing again and again. And sometimes I feel like I am numb to the message of love. I’ve heard it so many times that it feels like it’s lost its meaning to me. And I want to pose that question to us too, right? As progressive society, if we want to blame the society, if we want to blame worldliness, if we want to blame intellectual debates, have all of them wooed over our own lives that we lose the sheer greatness of the love of God, the love of Christ, the love that was displayed here.

Something that most of us do, I do this too, where when we pray, we say we love you, Lord. I love you, Lord, when we pray. But over the past week, as I’ve been preparing for this, I’ve had to stop myself from saying that because I don’t know if that’s true. Do I love God? Do I really love God when compared to the sheer weight of what was given to me, to the sheer weight? And I know we can never compare to it. But it really got me fearful of that very prayer. There’s constant sin. There’s constant, there’s just so much imperfection in my life, and so many of them out of my own free will, that when I say I love you, Lord, it makes no sense. It means nothing. If I’m being too poignant here, I’m asking myself this question too.

I talked about how the communion in Israel really changed my life, changed my perspective. But I wonder, when was the last time we actually concentrated, paid attention to what the pastors were saying during Holy Communion, during the verses that were being read? Forget, I mean forget very quickly, forget, forget, I mean forget very loosely, but forget the verses about people falling asleep when taking it in an unworthy manner. When was the last time the overwhelming love of Christ and sacrifice on the cross actually broke you? When was the last time it actually made you weep? When was the last time you actually cried knowing all of this?

We find anything and everything, worldly thoughts. I mean, right now I can even blame theological debates because I keep watching and trying to learn so much, trying to get as much information as I can, anything I can to draw me away from the cross. And we have become so arrogant in our faith, so arrogant in our very love, in our flawed love.

Paul Washer is one of my favorite preachers of all time and he says this very statement in one of his sermons. I love it. He says, your greatest need in life is to comprehend the love of God. If you would just grow in that, everything else would take its place. Everything else would take its place. 1 John 4:19, we love because he first loved us. People of God, it’s not about how much you love him, it’s about how much he loves you.

The scary thing to me is as I was going, as I was going, as I was nearing prayer at the end of my preparation, I wondered if at this age, and if Jesus was looking at me, he would be looking at, he would be saying, he would be asking the question here but very eerie, very scary for me to think, but would he be saying, my people, Angel, why have you forsaken me? And that question, that question really scares me. I know I’m not able to live a perfect life, to live a holy life without his grace, but I also know there’s a lot of things that I do to hurt my Savior. I have taken his love for granted. And I hope at the end of this sermon, I hope for the same thing. I hope that the love of Christ will drive us today. The very profoundness of his love would overwhelm us and it would drive us to seek a holy life.

Can we all close our eyes? We go back into a time of worship. We fell in love with Jesus. We fell like I was rambling, sure, but at the end of the day, these are things that I’m sure a lot of us are faced with too. I don’t know how many of us have asked these questions to yourselves. Do we love our God? Or have we even taken the time of this day, of this week, to actually look upon the cross and actually focus on that and see how much our God loves us?

Heavenly Father, Lord, we come into your presence, Father. We come with heavy hearts. We come, Lord, Father, I know, Lord, how you’ve convicted me of this, of knowing how much I’ve taken your love, Father, for granted. And I pray that very thing. I know, Lord, it’s a very difficult prayer to pray, but Lord, we pray that in our selfishness, in our arrogance, Lord, we have done things that displease you, Father, and we pray that you would forgive us. Lord, in your love, you have given us so much, so much more than we deserve. The fact that we have a claim in eternity itself is so great a wonder that I cannot imagine. Lord, we are so grateful for you, Father, for your love. And Father, I pray, I pray that this will be our prayer as well, Lord, that in these days, we will be able to focus on your love, Lord, that love will drive us to the holy life. Father, as we pray, we know, Lord, you are here to lead us in every sense. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.