Abandonment is a terrible feeling. If you have ever felt deserted, betrayed, or quietly ignored by people you trusted, you already understand the weight of it. It can stir anger, bitterness, and a kind of ache that lingers longer than we would like to admit. Julian Lennon once spoke candidly about his own experience of being left behind by John Lennon: “He was a hypocrite… Dad could talk about peace and love out loud to the world, but he could not show it to the people who supposedly meant the most to him.” That kind of honesty cuts deep because it reflects a common human story. We say the right things, we mean well at times, and yet we fail each other. I have had my share of moments on both sides of that equation—feeling overlooked and, if I am honest, sometimes being the one who did the overlooking.
Psalm 22 opens with words that sound like a cry from that very place: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” It is not polished language; it is raw and real. Life has a way of bringing us to similar questions, even if we do not always say them out loud. We may sit in a quiet room, replaying conversations, wondering how things unraveled so quickly. It is a strange thing how a full house can still feel empty. In those moments, we can drift toward thinking we are entirely on our own. Yet the story of Scripture does not leave us there. As J. I. Packer wrote, “He never abandons anyone on whom he has set his love.” That truth can feel hard to hold when emotions are loud, but it remains steady even when our thoughts wander in circles. God’s faithfulness does not depend on our ability to track it perfectly.
The cry of Psalm 22 is taken up by Jesus Christ on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). In that moment, He entered fully into the experience of abandonment, not for His own failure, but for ours. He bore the weight of our wandering, our neglect, and our broken relationships. Yet His final words reveal trust: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46), and before that, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The work was complete. The separation was not the end of the story, for “God raised him up” (Acts 2:24). In Christ, abandonment is faced, carried, and overcome. What feels final to us is not final to Him, and the cross stands as a reminder that even in the deepest silence, God’s purpose is still at work, holding together what we feared had been lost.