"Drown the Puppies"- When Love Seems Cruel Part 2

The preaching team at our church has a saying when preparing to preach: "Drown the puppies".
They use it to when they have to throw out parts of a sermon that they are very attached to but must go. I've had to divide this blog about the confusing aspects of God's love into three parts, and even then, I've had to "drown some puppies". There is so much more to say than can ever be said to describe this: 
"I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us." Romans 8:39 (The Message)
So for now, I'm sticking with the quotes of Jesus, God's Own Son, that challenge our confidence in the statement: God is Love.
Jesus cried to His Father in the garden that He be spared this particular route to the salvation of the world, the route of the cross.
His Father answered with silence, the kiss of a betrayer,
and with "Crucify Him" from the mouths of His people.
Jesus' suffering was excruciating; His words from the cross "Why have you forsaken me?"
are certainly a human response to unbearable pain.
I've spent a lot of time meditating and studying this moment...there are more opinions out there than hairs on my head, so I accept that my understanding of God's love and relationship with Jesus is a journey and for now, here is what I believe the "Cry of Dereliction" teaches us about Jesus and His Father.
My last blog discussed Jesus' humanness. Jesus was fully human.
But Jesus was FULLY God as well, one of the Three-in-One.
When Jesus experienced the cross, He experienced human responses to the pain.
But He also experienced the cross as God. That is the incredible, profound truth of the cross: Jesus is the meeting place of God and man. And that is exactly what was intended from creation. God and humanity in perfect relationship.
His cry is a prophetic quote from Psalm 22. Many of His hearers would have heard it in context to the Psalms' proclamations of human suffering answered by God's faithfulness. We only hear it as an isolated reference to apparent desertion. The ancient question is: "If Jesus is God, One with the Trinity, how did He remain God if His Father deserted him, separated Himself from Him?"
And how, could Jesus bare the ordeal at all... if His divinity was no longer intact?
How can we call a God "Father", who deserts His son at the moment of greatest desperation?
Heavy questions. 
In the past, I've answered questions like this with: "Well, it's just too big to understand...I will never understand. God's 'love' will never make sense to me. Salvation will never really make sense to me either, I just believe it. That's what faith is...believing what we just don't get."
But when I got tired of being lazy in my faith I started really digging into these questions and the deeper layers are fascinating and thrilling and I must share them!! I can't drown the puppies! 
The cross is the meeting place of God and man...the coming together of He who is holy and we who are not. 
Perfect God meets imperfect man in perfect Jesus. The cross is what had to happen at such a meeting. It is the intersection of His mighty, unconditional love and holiness with the devastation of our rebellious, idolatrous hearts. Jesus, fully God, fully man, is the only One who could act on His Father's behalf and ours. 

But I haven't answered those nagging questions...
on to part 3.