Psalms 22:18

Psalm 22 was written by King David as a raw lament — a cry of suffering and abandonment that begins with the words 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' — the exact words Jesus would later cry from the cross. Written centuries before crucifixion was even practiced as a form of execution, the psalm describes the physical experience of crucifixion in striking detail. This specific verse was literally fulfilled when Roman soldiers at the cross divided Jesus's clothes and cast lots — a form of gambling, like rolling dice — for his tunic. The Gospel of John records this event explicitly, noting the prophecy's fulfillment. David may have written this from inside his own suffering, but in God's design, his words became a precise preview of what Jesus would endure.

Jesus, you know what it feels like to suffer while the world below keeps moving, indifferent. Be close today to the people I know who are bleeding quietly. And forgive me for the times I have been one of the soldiers — too caught up in small things to notice what is happening right in front of me. Amen.

There is something about the soldiers casting lots that stops you cold. Not because it's the worst part of the crucifixion story — it isn't. But because of what it reveals about the scene. Jesus is dying above them. And a few feet away, men are gambling over his last possession — not in secret or in guilt, but in plain sight of everything happening overhead. The world around suffering has always had this quality: ordinary life continuing while someone bleeds. Paperwork getting filed. Conversations happening in the waiting room. The indifference isn't always cruelty. Sometimes it's just absence — people too occupied with small things to notice what's happening right in front of them. What makes this verse land so strangely is that David wrote it centuries before this moment, from inside his own suffering — and God wove it precisely into the story of the cross. Which means your suffering, too, might be held in a frame much larger than you can currently see. The soldiers didn't know they were fulfilling a prophecy written a thousand years before. You probably don't always know what God is doing inside your hardest days either. That's not a tidy comfort. But it might be enough to keep going — the possibility that even what feels most abandoned is not outside of God's sight.