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For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
- Psalm 22:24
If forced to choose one psalm as “the most comforting,” I would imagine that quite a few people would pick Psalm 23. For many it may be the only psalm that they have memorized: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” From my perspective, though, I’m not sure that there is anything more comforting than the psalm that precedes it—Psalm 22 that is often read on Good Friday.
I think it is the most comforting because it is the most truthful in expressing our feelings of loneliness and abandonment. In his time of abandonment, his time of deepest suffering, these are the words that came to the mind of Jesus as he was being crucified. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” If he’d had the strength to continue, maybe he would have kept going: “I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.”
In your darkest moments, those moments when you feel most alone, turn to and pray the psalms. Turn to and pray this psalm. Old Testament scholar James Mays writes that “those who pray are lonely, but not alone in the universe.” Indeed. Psalm 22 not only gives voice to the pain, the suffering, and the abandonment we might feel—it also points us to the cross, and to the Savior. He is a Savior who has suffered with us, and who suffered for us.
But Psalm 22 is comforting because it not only gives voice to our suffering, it also gives voice to the victory that we see in the cross and in Jesus’ resurrection. “For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help” (v24).
Jesus’ death and resurrection neither avoids nor leaves us in the depth and despair of the human condition. In raising Jesus, God demonstrates victory over sin and death, a victory in which we will share. When we are in the midst of the most painful of times, this psalm reminds us of God’s faithfulness and points us to our sure and certain future with him. There could be no truer comfort. Thanks be to God!