forsaken

Did you know that you can feel lonely in the midst of a crowd?

 

Mother Teresa once wrote:  "We have drugs for people with diseases like leprosy.  But these drug do not treat the main problem, the disease of being unwanted.  that's what my sisters hope to provide.  The sick and poor suffer even more from rejection than material want.  Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."

 

And when do we find loneliness the most difficult to handle?

 

What time of day? 

 

At night.

 

Nobody wants to go to bed alone.

 

That's why they leave the radio or T.V. on - that's why many get into bed with someone they don't even know.

 

That's why sexually transmitted diseases are soaring, people don't want to go to bed alone.

 

When you are alone at night, your fears tend to exaggerate.  Creaks in the house sound worse when you are all along.

 

You start imagining the shower scene from the movie Psycho.

 

Your mind goes into overdrive when you are alone.

 

People will admit to a lot of problems in today's world - but for some reason hesitate to mention that they are lonely.

 

Forsaken.

 

Feeling like no one cares.

 

Even or especially Jesus on the cross cried out (actually roared), "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

 

If the cry of a heart of someone who feel abandoned.  As an orphaned child.  A single parent struggling to make ends meet.

 

The mother standing over the bed of a sick child.

 

The father out of work.

 

The prisoner in his cell.

 

A wife abandoned by her husband.

 

Singles who celebrate their birthday alone.

 

The person at rock bottom who has no where else to go.

 

What can I offer you today?  The very same Jesus who died on the cross that day.

 

He is with you, always with you wherever you go - and in whatever circumstance you are going through - and He understands your feelings of abandonment and loneliness.

 

Why not pray something like this?

 

"I would ask you to fill this ache, this void, this loneliness in my life.  I am trusting you to do it.  There is nobody else to whom I can turn.  I turn completely and totally to you."

 

Just a thought for a Tuesday.