Facing our ninth hour and the feeling of being abandoned - Mark 15:34 with a story from WWII about six Navy pilots with an observation and a prayer.

SCRIPTURE: Mark 15:34
At the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice… “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

STORY:
During WWII six Navy pilots left their aircraft carrier on a mission. After searching the seas for enemy submarines, they tried to return to their ship shortly after dark. But the captain had ordered a blackout of all lights on the ship. Over and over the frantic pilots radioed, asking for just one light so they could see to land. But the pilots were told that the blackout could not be lifted. After several appeals and denials of their request, the ship's operator turned the switch to break radio contact--and the pilots were forced to ditch in the ocean.

OBSERVATION:
For lack of a light pilots ditched their planes. For lack of assurance we feel abandoned. And in the painful hour of death Jesus felt abandoned as well.

It must be an awful feeling – being abandoned, or at least having a sense that you have been abandoned. Forgotten. Ignored. Turned out. Left alone.

The silence can be deafening much like flying across the ocean in the blackest of night, looking for ones ship, a safe place to land and finding nothing. There was radio contact, but nothing in sight. The sense of being lost.

And so Jesus goes to the threshold of death feeling abandoned. Where was God in all of this? Thus, is the weight of sin on his shoulders. Being cut off. Abandoned by the very one he was serving.

Jesus went down that dark path so that we would never have to face our ninth hour without the sense of God’s presence.

PRAYER:
Sometimes we feel abandoned. Sometimes we wonder where you are. Sometimes we even question your existence. Help us in our ninth hour, God, help us!