Week 9- Loneliness
The pangs of loneliness are all too familiar for us as humans. The isolation that seems inescapable, the feelings of distance from what we long for, and the fog of timelessness that draws close that leads us to despair. When those that we've relied on let us down and we feel the agitation of feeling cut adrift from belonging.
These are not just our experiences today but the same experience of Jesus as he prayed in Gethsemane, waiting to be betrayed by his friends and to suffer for the very same friends. Through this death, Jesus liberated all of humanity so that we all are carried from isolation into relationship, from orphaned into family, and from captivity into freedom.
Because of Jesus, loneliness is not our eternal experience but a temporary reminder that we are in need of rescue, that we are made for relationship and proximity with another. Jesus has provided for both our rescue and our relationship with the eternal Creator. The one who does not just respond to us but prepares for our needs ahead of us, who is for us not against us, and who has revealed himself to us.
When reading BREAD this week, whether loneliness is a familiar or distant experience, press deep into the truth that God hasn’t remained distant from us but has drawn close. When we turn to him from our own efforts to lift ourselves out from the pit or navigate our course, He rescues us and brings us home.