You may be surrounded by hundreds of people on a daily basis and yet feel all alone. Those who live in metropolitan areas live, work, and commute besides thousands upon thousands and still many feel alone. You may be a new student leaving home for the first time as you embark on your college education years and feel overwhelmed and apprehensive. You may have just moved to a new town to start a new job and you feel grief over leaving friends and family behind mixed with crippling fears of not knowing anyone.
You may face the dungeon of dark thoughts that invade your mind and you do not have the freedom to tell anyone around you. You may be imprisoned in a deep dark secret sin and suffer with guilt and shame but you must keep up pretenses. You may suffer silently under the cloak of depression but feel you have no one to talk to. You may know something is wrong with you physically and yet due to lack of money or insurance cannot say anything to anyone. You endure the pain silently through another day. You may be so overwhelmed you feel like giving up. In your despair and hopeless suicide seems like a viable option. You do not have anyone to talk to because they could not handle the truth behind your facade.
You may live alone. The phone never rings. Text messages seldom come. Nobody seems to care. You will yourself to exist day by day. It is getting easier for you to withdraw from everyone and everything. You endure long days with extensive boredom and extraordinary sorrow. You long for companionship but nobody ever comes and so you suffer silently.
You may feel trapped in a loveless marriage. From the outside it may appear to others you have the perfect family. Inside the walls tell a different story. Anger, bitterness, fighting, strife, and un-forgiveness tear at your heart leaving gaping wounds. You work, worship, and walk through life in a daze all the while suffering silently.
You may be caught in the vice-like grip of addiction. You cannot find your way out to get your feet back on solid ground. You feel the shame and know the addiction is destroying your life. You cannot get free. Nobody may know and you suffer day by day silently.
I do not know all of you and I certainly do not what you are suffering through silently. For some it is the grief over the death of a spouse, child, or parent. Others sit paralyzed in fear not knowing how the bills will get paid. Either way you suffer. You hurt and you agonize day after day. Tears still fall. The hole in your heart will not go away. Others may move on but you are stuck. The suffering endures and you feel you must bravely bear it silently.
I have been there. I know the frustration and despair that can so easily set in. I also know how lonely those times can feel. It is easy to withdraw into your private pain and go on suffering silently. It is also easy to entertain the thoughts that nobody understands and nobody cares what you are suffering through.
The only hope I can give you is Jesus does. He cares. I know some of you are suffering with bitterness at God because the way He has dealt with you. Some of you are in some hard times. Many of you feel God betrayed you and let you down when you needed Him the most. Instead of faith and love you suffer silently through seething anger and doubt about God's faithfulness.
Jesus still cares. He still loves. He is still near you. "And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you." [I Pet 5:10]
While suffering silently some of you may be in dire need of restoration, confirmation, and strengthening. You are not alone. Jesus is with you. Keep pouring your heart out to Him. Splash all your grief onto Him. Vent all your anger and frustration to Him. Express your weariness to Him. Carry your confusion to Him. Hurl your addiction on Him. He is with you and can handle all of it.
Please be reminded these days of suffering will come to an end. All diseases will be healed for the redeemed in eternity if not down here. Every burden will be lifted in heaven as well as down here for those who know and trust Christ day by day. Every day of struggle will be lightened in eternity. Keep pressing on. You are not alone and your days of suffering will not last forever.
Maybe this whole blog has been God's reminder that you are not forgotten and you are not alone. He is there. My heart goes out to all who suffer silently. Today may you be reminded you are not alone. Our Lord is with you in ways you may not be able to see to get you through this suffering. One day we will all triumph in His presence as we lay down the shackles of this mortal body. May we keep trusting, enduring, and praising until that day.
No comments:
Post a Comment