I FEEL... AloneSample

The Feeling Is Real

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?” – Psalm 22:1 (NIV)

These words were written by David, and they were quoted by Jesus from the cross. That fact alone is worth staying with. The Son of God, in the most significant moment in human history, expressed the feeling of divine abandonment in the language of a psalm.

He did not push through it quietly. He voiced it.

There is a version of faith that treats loneliness as a problem to be solved rather than a feeling to be named. It moves too quickly to reassurance, reaches too fast for the verse that promises comfort, and in doing so communicates, however unintentionally, that what you are feeling is not quite acceptable.

Psalm 22 does not do that.

David holds the feeling and speaks it out to God directly, without softening it or explaining it away. My God, my God. He does not stop calling God his, even in the moment of felt distance. The relationship is not abandoned because the feeling is painful. The pain is brought into the relationship, and that is precisely where it belongs.

If you are carrying loneliness today, you do not have to arrive at God with it already resolved.

You can bring it as it is, in the words you actually have. He has heard this prayer before. He has prayed it Himself.

Prayer

Lord, I bring You the loneliness I have been carrying, without trying to make it sound more acceptable than it is. You have heard this kind of prayer before. Receive it honestly, and meet me here. Amen.