Darkness and Silence

At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. . . . Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
—Matthew 27:45–46 (NLT)

Jesus barely clung to life. He was still pushing Himself up against the raw wooden beam to breathe, and then he would slump back down, hanging from the iron nails in His hands. Up and down . . . up and down. The pain must have been maddening by now.

Jesus’ death took no less than six hours. His hands and feet were nailed to the wooden beams at nine o’ clock in the morning. Sometime during the next three hours He uttered His first three statements: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”; “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise”; “Woman, behold, your son!” At about noon, “darkness fell over the whole land” (Mark 15:33), and an eerie silence surrounded the Place of the Skull.

Nature bowed in sympathy as its Creator was put to death. How strange it must have seemed to those who stood and stared. From noon until three in the afternoon two things were present: darkness and silence.

The Son had never known a time of broken fellowship with the Father. But now, for the first time, He experienced it.

It makes all the difference that Christ took our sin upon Himself, paying the penalty for it in full, so we no longer must dread facing that penalty. Now that He has opened the possibility of instant access to the Father, we can have a relationship that was once impossible.

Alone upon the cross He hung
That others He might save;
Forsaken then by God and man,
Alone, His life He gave.
Alone, alone He bore it all alone;
He gave Himself to save His own,
He suffered, bled and died, alone, alone.
—LATIN TEXT, 13th century