I have been struggling with loneliness lately. Some if it is the typical baseline loneliness that seems to never leave. Some of it is circumstantial and will lessen as those circumstances change. Some of it is the additional loneliness I experience as a cancer survivor, the feeling that very few people know what it is like to be me.
It seems that most (all?) women experience loneliness in varying degrees. We long for a greater quality or quantity of friendships. We crave the companionship of someone really “gets” us, that feeling that someone understands what our life feels like. I am blessed with a wonderful circle of friends, but loneliness still plagues me sometimes, as it has for the past few weeks.
Last week as I listened to a sermon on the last few verses in Matthew, I was struck by Jesus’ promise in Matthew 28:20b:
“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
This loneliness that I feel is meant to point me to the One who knows every detail of my life. He knows every fear, every tear, every need.
My Savior enjoyed the most perfect, loneliness-free existence as a member of the Trinity. But Christ “did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:6-7). I cannot imagine the loneliness Christ must have felt as He bore His Father’s wrath on the cross and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He endured this painful separation from His Father so that I can be brought into relationship with Him.
So the very Son of God can say to me, “I am with you always.”
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