✝️ Psalm 22: The Cry from the God-Forsaken Place

(retransmitted by Virgin Monk Boy after staring into the silence, refusing to call abandonment the final word)

Psalm 22 is the scream before the resurrection. It begins with the most honest prayer in scripture: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This is not tidy faith. This is the body panicking, the soul collapsing, the heart asking whether Love has left the building. But the psalm does not stay in despair. It moves through humiliation, exhaustion, memory, terror, and finally into praise. Not fake praise. Not praise that skips the wound. Praise that rises from the wound because something in us still knows the Holy is nearer than the silence suggests.

1
My God, my God
why does it feel like You left?

I cry out
and the sky gives me nothing

No answer
No comfort
No holy customer service representative
available at this time

2
I call by day
and still feel unheard

I call by night
and still cannot rest

3
And yet
somewhere deeper than panic
I remember

You are still Holy
even when my nervous system
cannot feel You

4
Our ancestors trusted You
They leaned into the dark
and were not swallowed

5
They cried
and something opened

They trusted
and were not ashamed

6
But I feel less than human
mocked by mouths
that have never had to survive me

7
They look at me and sneer

Let Love save him
if Love likes him so much

Bless their little theology of cruelty

8
They think suffering proves abandonment
as if pain is a receipt
for divine rejection

9
But You were there
before I had language

You held me
when I was only breath
and need

10
From the womb
I was thrown into Mystery

Before I knew Your name
I was already inside You

11
Do not be far from me now
Trouble is close
and my strength is not

12
The bulls surround me
all muscle
all threat
all appetite

13
They open their mouths
like lions
as if my fear
is their feast

14
I am poured out like water

My bones feel scattered
My heart melts
like wax in the heat
of too much

15
My mouth is dry
My tongue sticks
to the roof of my grief

I feel lowered
into dust

16
The pack circles

Hands and feet wounded
body exposed
dignity stripped

17
I can count my bones
and they stare
like suffering is a show

18
They divide what is left of me
They gamble over my coverings
as if humiliation
were just another game

19
But You
O Love
do not stay distant

Come close
Be my strength
before I forget
I have any

20
Deliver my life
from the blade

Save my only heart
from the teeth
of despair

21
Pull me from the lion’s mouth
from the horns of everything
that thinks fear gets the final word

22
Then I will speak Your name
among the broken

I will praise You
not above them
but beside them

23
You who ache
praise Love

You who tremble
honor the Presence
that trembles with you

24
For Love has not despised
the suffering one

Love did not turn away
from the afflicted

Love heard
even when the answer
took longer than the wound wanted

25
My praise rises
from the place
I thought would kill me

I will keep my vows
not because I am strong
but because I was carried

26
The poor shall eat
and be satisfied

The ones who seek Love
shall find their hearts
still beating

27
All the ends of the earth
will remember

Not convert
Not perform
Remember

28
For the kingdom belongs to Love
not empire
not ego
not the loudest men
with the biggest banners

29
The proud and the starving
the dust-bound and the powerful
all return
to the same Breath

30
A people yet unborn
will hear the story

They will be told
that Love was present
even there

31
They will come and say
to a generation not yet breathing

This was not the end

Love did not leave

And somehow
we lived

—Virgin Monk Boy
(who once thought forsakenness was proof God was gone
but now knows even the scream can become scripture)

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