to embrace you with is love

But it doesn’t stop there. Can the Father turn a deaf ear to the pleas of his own Son? (If Jim can’t, you can bet God can’t. And if he can, we’re in Big Trouble.) The answer resounds from an empty tomb three days later: No, may it never be! And because the Father raised Jesus from the dead, there is nope for us all. Jesus felt God’s slap so that we could feel God’s caress—oh, we may feel forsaken in the midst of our suffering, but the fact remains, we’re not. “My God, why have you forsaken me”  was the cry of Christ on behalf of all humanity so that , in contrast, he could tenderly say to us, “Never will I forsake you” (see Hebrews 13:5). Despair may be bound to God, but so is all hope.

Despair, that rises in a direct and vertical line to God opens us up to change, real, hope, and the possibility of seeing God as he really is, not as we want him to be. Once we give an inch, God will take a mile. He’ll take a million miles. He’ll soar on the wings of the wind from heaven to here to show you who he is, to embrace you with is love.

(Joni Ereckson Tada and Steve Estes, When God Weeps, p. 156-157)