Alone, Yet Not Alone
Ever feel as though you’re the only person in the world?
Alone, dejected, obscure… forgotten? Don’t worry, because you’re not alone. Jesus Himself, has been there- done that. In fact, Jesus was the most lonely, friendless Man who ever walked the earth. John 1:11 says, “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” When He walked this earth as a man, the world didn’t recognize or acknowledge Him as it’s Savior. No one could possibly understand Him, when they didn’t even know WHO He was.
Not even Jesus’ disciples fully knew Him. “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me…?” (John 14:9) He knows what it feels like to be alone, undervalued, and misunderstood. Yet He could say, “Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” (John 16:32) What comfort the presence of His Father in Heaven gave to Him!
This is my encouragement to you: when people fail, friends move on, and life changes- the Friendship of God will always be there for you to lean on. He will be what no one ever could be. What a friend we have in Jesus!
Below is an essay entitled “The Friendship of God”, written by G.D. Watson on this very subject. I pray it speaks to your heart as much as it has to mine.
“God is the only friend who never fails us.
How frequently and easily the friendships of earth grow thread bare and wear out. As children, we all had little friends that we thought would last forever, but in a few years the delicate romance passed away, and the friendships drifted from us.
Then came youth, with to its friendships that we thought were rooted in granite, but they obeyed the same law of change and transitoriness.
And then came middle age life, with its more thoughtful and serious friendships, which after a while were rent with cruel misunderstandings and unexplained silences, and so languidly declined.
And then we drift on to the lonely quiet heavens of old age, into which we anchor our riper years, to find that change and decay have characterized all earthly things, including what we once supposed were friendships riveted with steel.
It is not always because friends have been unfaithful, but often the pressures of life have separated us. We were but poor creatures, and earth has had his special calling, peculiar burdens, diverse paths of travel, and the constant changes of new scenes, new circumstances, new acquaintances, new thoughts, new feelings. Like passing ships at sea, we lived a while in the sight of each other’s sails, and enjoyed the beautiful signaling by flags or rockets from soul to soul, but we each had to make a several port, and so we slipped over the rim of the sea, and lost sight of each other.
But God is the dear, old faithful Friend, from Whom we never sail away, and Who always is going our way, and making the same port, and Whose interests are always our own. The very things that have killed off the friendship of other people have only made God more and more a friend to us. Just where other friendships wear out, God’s friendship wears in. The things that make others forget us are the very things that make God remember us. Just where our failures and infirmities and sorrows over-tax the patience of earthly friends, God’s friendship breaks out afresh like finding a gold mine on a place of poor land whole fertility had been exhausted.
God’s friendship was not conditioned on our beauty, or prosperity, or success, or popularity, but on our personality and our being His own creatures who need Him forever. God’s friendship for us was never touchy, nor fastidious, nor rash, nor overbearing, nor critical, nor dependent on what other people thought about us. God has proved Himself over and over to be the Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.”