Poetry of the Cross: Why Have You Forsaken Me?

M

y God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
and by night, but I find no rest.

 
Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our fathers trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried and were rescued;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
“He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him;
let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
On you was I cast from my birth,
and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Be not far from me,
for trouble is near,
and there is none to help.

Many bulls encompass me;
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
my strength is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.

For dogs encompass me;
a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—
I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
they divide my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.

But you, O Lord, do not be far off!
O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dog!
Save me from the mouth of the lion!
You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen!

I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,
and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he has not despised or abhorred
the affliction of the afflicted,
and he has not hidden his face from him,
but has heard, when he cried to him.

From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will perform before those who fear him.
The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord!
May your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before you.
For kingship belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.

All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
even the one who could not keep himself alive.
Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.

 —David, Psalm 22 (ESV)

More Poetry of the Cross

• Dorothy at Field Stone Cottage: Its Throned Upon the Awful Tree
• Ellen of The Happy Wonderer: Poetry of the Cross
• Rosemary of Seasonings of the Heart: Extended on a Cursèd Tree
• Brandon of Siris: Good Friday

You are welcome to join me in my celebration of Poetry of the Cross if you wish. Just post a cross-centered poem today and/or tomorrow, send me the link to your poem and I’ll link back to it.

Gospel List 1

What is the gospel?

• It is “…Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David….”  (2 Timothy 2:8)
• It is “the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light.” (2 Timothy 1:10)
  
• It is the preaching or proclaiming of Christ. (Philippians 1)
• It is the unsearchable riches of Christ. (Ephesians 1:7-13)
• It is the word of truth. (Ephesians 1:13)
• It is the promise of God to Abraham that “In you shall all the nations be blessed,”  which, of course, refers to Christ and his work. (Galatians 3:7-14)
  
• It is the revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11-17)
• It is the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4)
• It is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-8)
• It is the word of the cross. (1 Corinthians 1:17-18)
• It is the preaching of Jesus Christ. (Romans 16:25)
• It is the naming of Christ. (Romans 15:20)
• It is the word of Christ; it is the good news that Jesus is Lord and God has raised him from the dead. (Romans 10:5-14)
• It includes the truth that “God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 2:16)
• Is was “promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures.” (Romans 1:2)
• It is “concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord…” (Romans 1:3-4)
• It is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16)

What I’ve done here is look at every mention of the gospel in Paul’s epistles, searching for clues to the content of the gospel in the statements made about the gospel. If you feel this list comes out of the blue, read the comments here.

I intended to hold this post until after Easter, since I’ve been more or less taking this week off from blogging. (Most of the poetry posts were queued up beforehand, waiting to publish automatically. All I’ve been doing each day is adding the links to other posted poems and correcting my misspellings and other goofs.) But I’ve changed my mind. After all, Easter is, first and foremost about the gospel, the good news that the Son of God came down and lived among us, died for our sins, was buried and then raised again on the third day.

Poetry of the Cross: Praise for the Fountain Opened

Let’s continue the poems with two by William Cowper himself, who was the subject of yesterday’s cross poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The first one is not a poem of the cross, but rather, one that sets the stage for the cross poem. But first, let me quote a bit from an earlier post on Cowper’s life.

After [Cowper’s] first suicide attempt, he became convinced of his own deep sinfulness and that he was under God’s wrath, but along with this he also became convinced that his sin, especially his suicide attempt, was so offensive to God that there was no way for him to be forgiven of it.

The conviction that he was beyond God’s forgiveness drove him even deeper into despair and he was sent to a mental asylum.

And that’s exactly what you’ll find in this first poem from Cowper—the conviction that he was beyond God’s forgiveness.

LINES WRITTEN DURING A PERIOD OF INSANITY

Hatred and vengence -my eternal portion
Scarce can endure delay of execution -
Wait with impatient readiness to seize my
Soul in a moment.

Damned below Judas; more abhorred than he was,
Who for a few pence sold his holy Master!
Twice betrayed, Jesus me, the last delinquent,
Deems the profanest.

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me:
Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;
Therefore Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all
Bolted against me.

Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers;
Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors,
I’m called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence
Worse than Abiram’s.

Him the vindictive rod of angry Justice
Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong;
I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb am
Buried above ground.

What changed that for him? It was reading the scripture while in the asylum, especially one verse, Romans 3:25:

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.

Here’s what William Cowper says about his conversion experience.

Immediately I received the strength to believe it, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon sealed in His blood, and all the fullness and completeness of His justification. In a moment I believed, and received the gospel ….

So now you know the background to one of Cowper’s best known Olney Hymns:

XV. PRAISE FOR THE FOUNTAIN OPENED. Zechariah xiii.1.

There is a fountain fill’d with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there have I, as vile as he,
Wash’d all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power,
Till all the ransom’d church of God
Be saved to sin no more.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I’ll sing thy power to save;
When this poor lisping stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave.

Lord, I believe thou hast prepared
(Unworthy though I be)
For me a blood-bought free reward,
A golden harp for me!

‘Tis strung, and tuned, for endless years,
And form’d by power divine,
To sound in God the Father’s ears
No other name but thine.

You’ll find all of Cowper’s Olney Hymns, several of them cross-centered, here.

More Poetry of the Cross

• Dorothy at Field Stone Cottage: Stricken, Smitten and Afflicted
  

You are welcome to join me in my celebration of Poetry of the Cross if you wish. Just post a cross-centered poem any day of this week (or every day of this week) and send me the link to your poem. I’ll link back to your poem in the next Poetry of the Cross post.