Not Abandoned!

“Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every human being.” —Thomas Wolfe.

Loneliness touches every human existence. We dread it. We fear being alone; being unwanted. The TV or radio is on to dispel the loneliness. We have pets to give us company.

While our need to connect is innate, some of us are always home alone. A the same time, we can be surrounded by others throughout the day, or even be in a lifelong relationships, still experience a deep and pervasive loneliness.

Although we try to connect with others, we are alone in our heads, alone in our emotions, alone in our health, alone in our sin and alone even in our death.

I can’t imagine living in this lonely world without Christ. To be like Tom Hanks in Castaway just having Mr Wilson for companionship and volleyball.

“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” – Mother Teresa

Our loneliness can have many causes, but our fear of being hurt, of losing people, of being rejected or betrayed often keep us from making connections. Jesus experiences all of that on his path to the cross. He willingly experienced all that to redeem us from the loneliness of broken humanity into the promise of eternal life with God and His people.

Jesus experiences all of this loneliness to bring us closer to God. Christ experiences the absolute loneliness of being cut off from God to redeem our loneliness. The sin of the world is cast upon him so he experiences the absolute hell of being cut off from God. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”(Matt 27:46)

My soul waits for God, from him comes my salvation. (Psalm 62:1)

When we see Jesus lifted up on the cross, when we see Christ experience this profound loneliness, then we know Jesus is the Christ. Then we know that he is giving us the wisdom and power of God. When we see Christ Jesus resurrected and restored to relationship with God the Father we know the Father is always with him  – and with us. (John 8:28-29)

The LORD created you for relationship and for community. God created you for himself. But as we are all too much aware, our sin and brokenness hampers our relationships with God and others.

Which is why Christ comes for you to take you from eternal loneliness into eternal community. This is why Good created the Church to build a community beyond our self-interests, hurts, and disconnection.

Every time we gather as a Church we have the opportunity to build each other up, to sow into the sense of belonging and being wanted. As we celebrate the LORD who comes for each human being, we celebrate caring for each other. We vanquish loneliness with the presence of Christ.

Don’t be lonely. Come belong to Christ and your brothers and sisters in Christ.

May the grace of the LORD God be with us all, now and always. (1 Tim 6:21)

Pastor Douglas