Feeling Alone

Is anybody really ever exempt from feeling alone?

It can come on you and sit upon you like a dark cloud, making the skies of your life overcast with the threat of storms on the horizon. I know some of you read this blog because you feel alone and long for connection to something real. I know I write if for the same reasons. People feel alone in crowded places. People attending churches of thousands feel alone. People leading churches of thousands feel alone. People in small and ordinary places feel alone. Feeling alone is not a comfy place and yet Christ himself often found himself there. Forsaken by friends, forsaken by family, forsaken by his government, forsaken by the church folk and forsaken by His ABBA. That's alone.

The thing is that although we can feel alone, it is rarely actual. Its our self-perception but rarely is it accurate. I'm convinced that its a tool of the Enemy to instill fear and hopelessness into the caverns of our hearts, the problem is that it is a pretty effective weapon on his part. Particularly when we eat of the apple and believe his lies. When we allow ourselves to wallow in the self-pity and turn to our addiction of choice, the thing that gives us false intimacy. We run to these things that are dead because we feel alone and are looking for life. But can the dead raise the dead? Can the dead make life?

Feeling alone is a perception. Reality is that even in the desert of our lives, we are never alone. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall have no fear for thou art with me." (Psalm 23) Feeling alone is a trap of fear, don't drink the poison. You are never alone. The role of authentic christian community is our best weapon against this kind of spiritual warfare. If you don't have this kind of community, do 1 of 2 things. Either find 2 or 3 others and start it, or stop and see where its already happening around you and join it. Quite literally, you can't live without it.

"Call it a clan, call it a tribe, call it a network, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one."
~ Jane Howard

peace,