Simply put, Psalm 22 is what got me to put my trust in Jesus.

Still with me?

Great! Here’s the longer version of that story…

I grew up in the Christian church and was raised by very faithful Christian parents, but my own faith wavered quite a bit as I grew older. By the time I was in college, it’s fair to say I had no faith at all. I was pretty sure religion was just a pleasant fiction that helped weak-minded people pretend that life isn’t as horrible as it truly is. I wouldn’t say I was ever an atheist, but I was very much an agnostic. That is, I was never certain that God didn’t exist, I was just uncertain that He did exist. And I didn’t really care whether He existed or not.

But it made me uncomfortable to have a family so devout in their faith while I remained neither hot or cold. I’ve always been a decisive person, so I really disliked taking the position that “maybe” God exists. And it seemed to me that if I were to not follow in my family’s footsteps, I should at least have good reasons for it. So, I decided to do something I had never done before: I read the Bible.

I started with the Gospel of Mark. I started with Mark for 2 reasons. First, as one of the 4 Gospels, it was almost entirely about Jesus. And since Jesus is what Christianity is all about, that seemed like a good place to start. And second, it was a very short book. Yes, that’s right: I was putting the lowest possible effort into my spiritual well-being! Ah, to be young.

Overall, I didn’t run into anything surprising (though I never previously read the Bible on my own, I was thoroughly exposed to the Gospels over the years simply through my family’s regular attendance). But I happened to have a study Bible with me as I was reading Mark, loaded with footnotes about the text that offered alternate translations and scholarly notes about the culture of the time and how it might impact the meaning of the words in ways our modern ear might not pick up.

One note in the account of Jesus’s crucifixion stood out to me in particular. It noted that Jesus’s anguished cry of “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” was actually quoting the first line of Psalm 22. The note further suggested that it was common to quote the opening line of a Psalm as a way to call the entire Psalm to the listener’s mind. Well, that piqued my curiosity. Now I had to know, what did the rest of Psalm 22 have to say?! I immediately flipped through the pages back to the Psalms, and to Psalm 22. I began to read…

And I was absolutely blown away by what I found! Psalm 22 described, in eerie detail, what Jesus was going through. The scorn and ridicule of those around him. His garments divvied up by the casting of lots. His hands and feet pierced. It was clear to me I was reading a summary of what I had just read in Mark!

And I knew that the Psalms were written several hundred years before Jesus endured the agony that it described so well. 
That simple realization in that very instant opened my eyes to the possibility that even though the idea of an omniscient and omnipotent supernatural person might sound made up, it doesn’t mean it is made up. Eventually, you reach a point where there are just “too many coincidences.”  And I’ve discovered many more since then.

I encourage you to take a moment right now to follow in my footsteps. Read the Gospel of Mark. And once you’ve read through 15:39, go read Psalm 22 while it’s still fresh. Your mileage may vary, but for me, the day I read Psalm 22 was the day I truly began to believe that Jesus’s death on a cross thousands of miles away and thousands of years ago was the most important event in all of history.