God Stays

I am a person who is always thinking of other persons - what they might like, how to surprise them, how to support them, how to love on them. I spend my days pouring out, then I come into my sanctuary to recharge and be poured into by the God who created me to live this way. This simply feels natural to me. 

But there are times in my life that are harder than others, and it's in these times that I've realized that God is often all I have. 

In one deeply painful season of my life, I was serving in a congregation of beautiful, wonderful brothers and sisters who expressed great thankfulness for the gifts that I shared with them. For decades, these folks were part of my life, more than just on Sunday mornings. They were my family. 

Then, my life came crashing down in ways I couldn't have predicted and certainly could not have changed, and all of a sudden, I looked around and saw...nothing. No one. Heard no voices. Not a single person in the world was reaching back for me. Barely any at all even knew I was missing. 

As time went on, a few voices started to come out of the woodwork, searching, but they all had the same message - we miss the things you did for us. We miss the things you were good at. We miss the gifts you gave of yourself. 

Eventually, it hit me - I was truly alone. No one, in this massive network of what I would have called family, was even missing me. Nobody. 

And when I most needed help, there was no one willing to help me. 

It's hard when we have seasons like this in our lives. I think most of us have them. They come through the church or through our families or through our jobs or our hometowns or our teams or all kinds of places in which we thought we were interconnected with others only to find out that really? We weren't. We were reaching out, but no one else was reaching back, and when we slipped through the cracks, no one even seemed to notice and, cutting us deep to our core, no one was coming after us. 

Paul had this experience, too. 

You remember when Paul starts listing off all the things he's been through for the Lord - the beatings, the imprisonments, the accusations, the threats. Well, at the end of his second letter to Timothy, he's doing something similar, but this time, he's lamenting that for all he's going through in his life, he's looking around and discovering he's all alone. The folks he thought would be there when he was persecuted, accused, arrested are gone. One of them even left him to face the lions alone. "Everyone deserted me," Paul said. 

"But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength" (2 Timothy 4:17).

It sometimes feels like small comfort, especially when what we need in our lives is the physical presence of someone else in our dark space, but there's truly no greater comfort in the world than to know that God Himself is always with us. When the rest of the world turns its back on you, God...stays. In your hardest times, God is there. When you're facing the lions, God is by your side. With His strength, which is offered freely to you as grace. 

Praise the Lord.