Lent, Day 6: ONE WHO REALLY GETS US

Hebrews 4:14-5:10

There are people everywhere longing for someone to understand them, to accept them, and to be their friend.  Today, loneliness is a reality for countless numbers of people.  In February 2019, “Psychology Today” printed a story under the title, “Loneliness: A New Epidemic in the USA.”  Written by, Dr. Frank John Ninivaggi, M.D., F.A.P.A., an Associate Attending physician at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine Child Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut and the Psychiatric Director of the Devereux-Glenholme School in Washington, Connecticut, the article points out that “The newest epidemic in America now affects up to 47% of adults.  Of 20,000 U.S. adults ages 18 and older surveyed, half report feeling alone (40%) or left out (47%). One in four (27%) feel they are not understood. Two in five (43%) feel relations are not meaningful and they feel isolated (43%). Generation Z (those born after about 1995) was found to be the loneliest generation. 

You and I may not have known the numbers released in the article, but we already knew about the widespread reality called, loneliness.  You may be one listed somewhere in the above statistics.  

Into this reality Jesus comes to bring mercy and grace.  In Him we have someone who really gets us.  He understands our story and comes to us as a great high priest who brings compassion and empathy into us, and speaks the loving companionship of God to us.  He invites us into a community of people who have their own stories of life, and in whom God is living and helping them rewrite their story.

So it is that Hebrews calls us to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16).  God is not here to write us off but to open us up to marvelous wonders of amazing grace.  He is not outside somewhere telling us to get better but, rather, within us, to wrap His arms around us and draw us into wonderful, abundant, and eternal life.  

What is your story?  Will you dare open it up to God in fresh new ways and allow Jesus to bring truth and love and healing and renewal into you?  Give Him your story, whatever it is.  Loneliness.  Disenfranchisement.  Frustration.  Sin.  Anger.  

Are you tired of chasing pretty rainbows?  

Are you tired of spinning round and round?  

Wrap up all the shattered dreams of your life;

Give them all…Give them all to Jesus.  

Shattered dreams, wounded hearts, broken toys. 

Give them all…Give them all to Jesus,  

And he will turn your sorrows into joy.

(Bob Benson, Sr., Phil Johnson, 1975, Dimension Music)