the next moment is as much beyond our grasp, and as much in God’s care, as that a hundred years away. care for the next minute is as foolish as care for a day in the next thousand years. in neither can we do anything, in both God is doing everything.
c.s. lewis
loneliness.
it’s a cry. a moan, a wail. it’s a gasp whose origin is the recesses of our souls.
can you hear it? the abandoned child. the divorcee. the quiet home. the empty mailbox. the long days. the longer nights. a one-night stand. a forgotten birthday. a silent phone.
cries of loneliness. listen again. tune out the traffic and turn down the tv. the cries are there . . . you can hear them in the convalescent home among the sighs and the shuffling feet. you can hear them in the prisons among the moans of shame and the calls for mercy. you can hear them if you walk the manicured streets of suburban america, among the aborted ambitions and aging homecoming queens. listen for it in the halls of our high schools where peer pressure weeds out the “have-nots” from the “haves.”
this moan in a minor key knows all the spectrums of society. from the top to the bottom. from the failures to the famous. from the poor to the rich. from the married to the single.
many of you have been spared this cruel cry. oh, you have been homesick or upset a time or two. but despair? far from it. suicide? of course not. be thankful that it hasn’t knocked on your door. pray that it never will. if you have yet to fight this battle, you are welcome to read on if you wish, but i’m really writing to someone else.
i am writing to those who know this cry firsthand. i’m writing to those of you whose days are bookended with broken hearts and long evenings. i’m writing to those of you who can find a lonely person simply by looking in the mirror.
for you, loneliness is a way of life. the sleepless nights. the lonely bed. the distrust. the fear of tomorrow. the unending hurt.
when did it begin? in your childhood? at the divorce? at retirement? at the cemetery? when the kids left home?
maybe you . . . have fooled everyone. no one knows that you are lonely. on the outside you are packaged perfectly. your smile is quick. your job is stable. your clothes are sharp. your waist is thin. your calendar is full. your walk brisk. your talk impressive. but when you look in the mirror, you fool no one. when you are alone, the duplicity ceases and the pain surfaces.
. . .
am i striking a chord? if i am, if you have nodded or sighed in understanding, i have an important message for you.
the most gut-wrenching cry of loneliness in history came not from a prisoner or a widow or a patient. it came from a hill, from a cross, from a Messiah.
“my God, my God,” he screamed, “why did you abandon me!”
never have words carried so much hurt. never has one being been so lonely.
. . .
the despair is darker than the sky . . . the Trinity is dismantled. the Godhead is disjointed. the unity is dissolved.
it is more than Jesus can take. he withstood the beatings and remained strong at the mock trials. he watched in silence as those he loved ran away. he did not retaliate with the insults were hurled nor did he scream when the nails pierced his wrists.
but when God turned his head, that was more than he could handle.
“my God!” the wail rises from parched lips. the holy heart is broken. the sinbearer screams as he wanders in the eternal wasteland. out of the silent sky come the words screamed by all who walk in the desert of loneliness. “why? why did you abandon me?”
i can’t understand it. i honestly cannot. why did Jesus do it? oh, i know, i know. i have heard the official answers. “to gratify the old law.” “to fulfill prophecy.” and these answers are right. they are. but there is something more here. something very compassionate. something yearning. something personal.
what is it?
i may be wrong, but i keep thinking of the diary [that says] “i feel abandoned” . . . and i keep thinking of the parents of the dead child. or the friend at the hospital bedside. or the elderly in the nursing home. or the orphans. or the cancer ward.
i keep thinking of all the people who cast despairing eyes toward the dark heavens and cry, “why?”
and i imagine him. i imagine him listening. i picture his eyes misting and a pierced hand brushing away a tear. and although he may offer no answer, although he may solve no dilemma, although the question may freeze painfully in midair, he who also was once alone, understands.
–taken from No Wonder They Call Him Savior by Max Lucado
(just as a disclaimer, i don’t agree with everything Lucado says and all the implications he makes. however, i feel there are some things that he hits right on. i think this is one of them.)
snapped this picture while on a trainride through some mountains in skagway, alaska. we took the original pass carved out by the men (and few women) that participated in the klondike goldrush. we ended up going up and around the mountain you see in the distance. half of the mountain belongs to the u.s., the other to canada. we literally went to another country and back . . . 
taken from scottdesignworks. some very interesting ideas turned art.
forwarded by a friend. thought it was a good description of what ministry is all about– God, people, and our relationships with both.
open to any threads of discussion . . .
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…am currently reading, True Spirituality by Francis Schaeffer, about our relationships with others. wow.
“If I acknowledge that I am really not God, and that since the fall we all are sinful, then I can have true human relationships without battering myself to pieces because they are not sufficient in themselves, or because they are not perfect. The trouble with human relationships is that man without God does not realize that all men are sinful, and so he hangs too much on his personal relationships, and they crush and break. No love affair between a man and a woman has ever been great enough to hang everything on. It will crumble away under your feet. And as the edges begin to break away the relationship is destroyed. But when I am a creature in the presence of God, and I see that the last relationship is with an infinite God, and these human relationships are among equals, I can take from a human relationship what God meant it to provide, without putting the whole structure under an intolerable burden. More than this, when I acknowledge that none of us are perfect in this life, I can enjoy that which is beautiful in a relationship, without expecting it to be perfect*.Or we can put it in yet another way, the Christian is to be a demonstration of the existence of God. But if we as individual Christians, and as the church, act on less than a personal relationship to other men, where is the demonstration that God the Creator is personal? …There must be a demonstration; that is our calling: to show that there is a reality in personal relationship, and not just words about it. If the individual Christian, and if the church of Christ, is not allowing the Lord Jesus Christ to bring forth his fruit into the world, as a demonstration in the area of personal relationships, we cannot expect the world to believe. Lovelessness is a sea that knows no shore, for it is what God is not. And eventually not only will the other man drown, but I will drown, and worst of all, the demonstration of God drowns as well when there is nothing to be seen but a sea of lovelessness and impersonality.”
if you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. it is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.
c.s.lewis
a friend is someone with whom you dare to truly be yourself.
(if that is the case, can any of us say we have any friends?)
some people manage by the book, even though they don’t know who wrote the book or even what the book is.
