"When We're Alone"

by Dan Cooper

    Have you ever felt totally alone in this world? Have you ever felt like your whole world is crashing in around you and no one is there to help you along? I sure have and I’m pretty sure everyone feels the pain of loneliness plenty of times throughout their life.

    In my daily devotions I’ve been reading through the book of Job. In case you don’t know his story, Job was a guy that lived way back when, long before Jesus’ time. He was totally on fire for God and the Lord blessed him because of his devotion. In other words he was rich. He had huge herds of cattle, a loving wife and a lot of kids that he loved greatly. One day to prove Job’s devotion, God took it all away. All of his kids were killed, his livestock stolen and he started getting disgusting, itchy boils all over his body.

    In this dark hour for him you would think that his wife and friends would try to help Job bear this horrible pain. Instead they all turned against him. His wife told him to denounce God and die. His friends told him that it was all his fault because he sinned against God. Job begged his friends to leave him alone and told them over and over that he was innocent but they kept on falsely judging him and treating him like garbage.

    They say that when it comes to pain, “when it rains it pours.” Very often this is all too true. It feels like the whole world has turned against us and we are doomed to fail at everything we try at. In this very sinful and imperfect world it is impossible to have a lifetime of hilltop experiences. It is inevitable that we sometimes have to walk through the dark, lonely valley in order to reach the next hilltop. Sometimes these valleys can seem to go on forever and get worse and worse as you go through it.

    Before I moved here, I used to live near the beaches in Toronto. I loved making footprints in the sand and leaving sand castles, sculptures etc. Usually when we walk down the road of life we see our footprints, the footprints of our friends and family and another set created by God as he walks beside us. Sometimes when look around we only see one set of footprints. They skies are grey in the midst of this storm. You are cold and you feel so alone. What you need to do when you feel this way is look closer at those footprints. If you look hard enough you’ll realize that they aren’t yours. You though you were walking alone in the cold but in reality those are God’s feet making the impressions in the sand as he carries you through the storm. Just look up to his smiling face as he wraps his arms around you to shelter you from the wind of the storm.

    Jesus is always there to help us in these hard times because he knows exactly what it’s like to be left out in the cold. He has had to walk the beach alone in the middle of a raging tempest. Isaiah 53:3 says that “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” John 1:11 also says that “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”

    If it feels like that your best friends have totally ditched you just remember that Jesus felt that pain too. One of His best friends here on Earth, Peter, denied he even knew him three times in one night. When Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asked a few of his closest friends to stay awake and pray with him but they ended up falling asleep.

    We’ve all heard time and time again to call on Jesus when things get hard. It may be a Sunday School answer, but it truly is the best answer to any of your problems. Jesus knows exactly what you’re going through. He walked in a human body for thirty-three years experiencing every pain, sorrow and temptation we could ever face. He got through this life and He will most definitely help you get through yours too.