In yesterday’s blog I asked, how can we help people who feel lonely, even in company? Those with the kind of inner loneliness that makes them feel set apart from others, even people they know like them?
Listening to one of my favourite Christmas songs this morning, it struck me (again) how Jesus Christ is the answer to life’s deepest problems, including essential loneliness. A line in ‘O Holy Night’ says, ‘then He appeared, and the soul knew its worth.’
I could spend all day thinking about it. Christmas is followed by Easter. Before His incarnation, Jesus knew that He would be put to death on a cross; it was a preordained plan (Acts 2:23). 1 Peter 2:24 says, ‘He personally carried our sins in His body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By His wounds you are healed.’ Each soul is of immense value to Jesus.
I once met a man who was a supreme example of ‘essential loneliness’. He was carrying a Christian placard around the market place in Cambridge. It was cold and I asked him into a cafe for a cup of tea and a sandwich. He was looking for money to take a bus to another town, because he never stayed more than a couple of days anywhere. He was always on the move. There wasn’t a single person of significance in his life: he’d had a traumatic childhood which had made him vulnerable to abuse in his adult life (which was devastating) and couldn’t trust or connect with, another person.
But, in one of his spells in prison, he’d been led to faith in Jesus Christ. Only in Him, did his soul find its worth.
A lovely version of the song is here, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJgJVF7pSBQ
Thanks Louise, your comments brought to mind that in the Gospels there is a warning that even if we gained the whole world and lost our soul, we would have nothing. How wonderful our Saviour is that He came to save us.