Thanksgiving in the Day of Distress

2009 has been a difficult year.

In Sioux Falls, applications for food stamps is up 48%.

At church we have given helping hand funds at a pace that has been unprecedented in our 15 year history.

This morning a friend shared an email exchange between her extended family members. The exchange was rather tense and each writer was sure that their life was more stressful than the life of the other and that the other had better be nicer. (sounds like a fun family Thanksgiving!)

Life is stressful! Talking with as many people as I do, it seems like life is inundating folks at an outlandish level. If you are not in this category, you’ve got things to be thankful for! But if you are in the “Life is really, really hard right now” group, Thanksgiving might seem ill-timed this year.

These feelings of frustration or ingratitude or simply at a loss to find anything to be thankful for build huge amounts of guilt in the Christian heart.

But that is the enemy! God knows exactly how you feel. Jesus was human and felt emotions too.

When these thoughts hit me, I go straight to the Psalms. If David, a man after God’s own heart, could say things like “God, why do you stand far off and hide yourself in the day of trouble?” (Psalm 10) or
“How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13) or “O my God, I cry out by day and you do not answer; and by night I have no rest.” (Psalm 22) Then we as followers of Jesus can cry out too.

The thing that must counter balance it all is found in Psalm 42:5,11. “Hope in God for I shall again praise Him.” It is ok to say, “Lord here I am in the midst of a mess and it is really hard to be thankful and praise, BUT I promise that I will praise you again. I will go “along with the procession to the house of God, with the voice of joy and thanksgiving”. (Psalm 42:4)

Psalm after psalm after psalm declares the troubles and tribulations of the psalmist, but the psalmists never end on the bad note. Psalms provide the contrast of here’s where I am now, here’s what I am expecting God to do.

This is hope. This is faith.

Loneliness – It’s Not God’s Will for You to Go Through Life Alone

Genesis chapter 2 continues to tell us that God didn’t think it would be good for Adam to go through life alone. That’s one of our key principles around Church at the Gate. There are opportunities to plug into Life Groups and ways to serve. Over and over again, I find that if I am dealing with loneliness or depression that it makes a real difference to me to get around people. I have to force myself sometimes, but when I do, I get a better perspective on my issues. Serving others who are worse off than I am makes a difference too.

Our maturity in Christ is demonstrated best in the way we relate to others. Are we able to forgive and not take offense are we able to love even when it is difficult and be vulnerable when we’ve been hurt before?

But this is exactly the type of “preaching” I wanted to avoid in these posts. Nobody who’s lonely wants to hear how to fix it. They just want the pain to go away.

BUT…here’s the main thought I have on this topic. People are just people and if your hope and trust and dependence on others is where you are putting your cure for loneliness…people are going to disappoint. There is no spouse that at some points won’t disappoint you. There is no friend or family member that at some point won’t hurt your feelings or just not be available when you feel the greatest need. There is no pastor, teacher or mentor who will ever get it all right.

The book I’ve been slowly working my way through all year (The Gospel According to Job) puts it this way:

Nevertheless, even in a good church people experience a certain measure of isolation, a certain poverty of human fellowship, and this is not without purpose. For this loneliness, this place in our hearts that no other human being can touch, is the place reserved for God alone, the place that only He can fill. No human being can love us as God does. No other person can speak to us from the bottom of our own hearts as the Holy Spirit does. No one else can plumb the mystery of our character and discern our peculiar needs and gifts as clearly as we ourselves can by the Holy Spirit’s light. Accordingly, all of us must discover what it means to have no other comfort except the comfort we draw from our God in the lonely privacy of our own prayers.

Don’t go through life alone…Go through life with the One who loves you so much that He gave it all.

Loneliness – From the Beginning

**My deepest apologies for not getting this post out in a timely manner.**

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.

Genesis chapter two details for us Adam’s life just after the creation. Genesis chapter three details Adam’s fall. The very interesting part of this for me is that Adam was lonely before the fall. Loneliness in itself is not fully because of the fall of man. So how do we understand this condition of the human heart?

If Adam was made in the image of God, then God’s character qualities should shine forth in Adam’s unfallen state. Adam was a worker v.15, “put him into the garden to cultivate and keep it”. Adam was creative – just think about the name aardvark, that’s even kind of funny! But Adam was lonely. Loneliness did not come after the fall or as a result of sin. Adam, created in God’s image, desired companionship. This is not a Plan B, but the Plan A as set forth by God from the very beginning.

“God used loneliness to cultivate something in the heart of Adam. God created longing in his heart and made Adam endure a rigorous process of recognizing his lacking. Loneliness became the birthplace for longing and desire. Aloneness presupposes desire and longing. Without the longing for something else, loneliness is impossible…desire for a companion grew within Adam. This was God’s ultimate object lesson for Adam to understand something of God, himself. Adam was a creature of desire and intimacy, made in the image of his Creator. God stamped his own longing for communion on the very nature of human beings.” Alan Hood – The Excellencies of Christ.

So what difference should this make to me when I am lonely. God knew that the fall would happen, so He introduced longing so that we would find our way back to Him. Today we run from loneliness like the plague, while in fact it is the Divine invitation to run to Him who longs for us.

Luke 5:16 tells us that Jesus OFTEN withdrew to a lonely place to pray. How interesting is it that He knew the best place to commune with His Father was in the LONELY place.

So not that my introvert side needs more help, but I am seeking out the lonely places lately and God has been meeting me in ways that I have not seen before.

Your heart was made for Him. And when you are lonely, the person you might just be missing is your Creator and coming Bridegroom. Seek Him and He promises to allow us to find Him. Loneliness, itself, is not what we seek, but in loneliness we find the One for whom our hearts were made.

Desire for God will cresendo at the end of the age, because wait…a wedding is coming. Think of the cry and anticipation of a Bride for a Bridegroom. “And the Spirit and the BRIDE cry, ‘Come.’” The cry of a bride is one of joyful longing.

Loneliness

Once again, God has taken one topic and highlighted it a couple of times and in different ways to me.

At lunch on Sunday we were talking about the “connectedness” people have through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, yet with all these “friends” and “followers” who has true face to face friends? Isolation breeds loneliness, through many technological methods we have found a hollow candy coating to disguise the true state of our hearts.

Even if you are surrounded by people you can be utterly and devastatingly alone. A wise woman told me years ago that the loneliest place in the world can be the space between a husband and wife in bed. Just doesn’t matter if it seems like life has given the greatest support system, family or friends. Others can look at your life and have no idea how isolated your life might be.

I’ve known and know loneliness. It pops up at the most unlikely times. And in this post, I’m not knocking my husband, kids or friends, but I’m learning to look at loneliness in a new way. My thoughts here are just the beginning of my processing. So jump in and comment over the next couple of entries.

I’m not interested in the lectures about “getting out there” or getting involved in activities, because I think I’ve found some amazing new teaching on the subject of loneliness. And I won’t write about the guilt producing, finger pointing solutions to loneliness at all. But I think I’m learning that loneliness can be something to be embraced and something that can actually enrich my life.