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‘Into your hand I commit my spirit.’ Psalm 31:5

Today we remember Jesus’s prophetic entry into Jerusalem on donkey. Immediately before and after this, Jesus stays at Bethany on the Mount of Olives. A place of prayer and retreat before for all that lies ahead.

I like to think he reached for the Psalms in that secret place of prayer.

Psalm 31 is a prayer of abandonment. David is in distress, grief, scorned by enemies, dreaded by acquaintances (vv.9-11). He hears the whisper of terror and plots.

It can be hard to pray when you’re in fear, or grief, or pain. When you feel abandoned. It’s much easier to numb the pain with displacement activities; to protect your heart from that innate fear that God is too distant to hear: ‘I had said in my alarm, ‘I am driven far from your sight’’ (v.22).

Jesus experienced abandonment for real. He was driven far from God’s sight. Literally by the weight of the world’s sin. But Jesus, like David, incredibly abandons Himself to God. In the few words he gasped from the cross less than a week later, Jesus reaches for this Psalm (v.5): ‘Into your hand I commit my spirit.’ (cf Luke 23.46)

Charles de Foucauld, French explorer, priest, and hermit who lived in the Sahara (before his martyrdom in 1916) wrote a lot about abandonment: “The more you suffer, the more you are tempted, the more you need to pray: prayer now alone can strengthen you with help and consolation. Let not pain and fierce temptation paralyse your prayer. The devil does all he can to prevent you praying at these times. But rather than give in to weak human nature which absorbs the soul in its pain so that it sees nothing else for the time, turn your eyes to the Lord and speak to Him standing so near. He is with you, looking on you lovingly listening for your words”.

This Holy Week, let Jesus teach you to pray, to abandon yourself, to surrender your pain and grief to him. He is lovingly listening for your words.

“Be strong and let your heart take courage” (v.34)

Let us pray: Lord Jesus, I surrender all of myself in joy and pain to You today. Amen.

The Rt Revd Jill Duff, Bishop of Lancaster.