'Alone' is a Redemptive Impossibility

"If you're God's child, don't ever tell yourself that you are alone - for you, 'alone' is a redemptive impossibility."  Paul David Tripp

Tripp's thoughts: "Walking away from the funeral of a loved one, you can feel very alone. Dealing with long-term sickness is a very lonely experience. Facing financial difficulties that you have no means to solve can make you feel very weak and alone. It's a lonely experience to deal with the personal rejection of a loved one. Standing for what is right in a culture that mocks the morals you hold dear can make you fearful and alone. Assessing that you don't have what it takes to face what you cannot escape can make you feel unprepared and alone. Loneliness of some kind is the universal experience of people living this side of eternity. Sin brought alienation and separation into the world. It first broke the fellowship between God and man, and because it did, it also shattered the fellowship between people and their family members, friends, and neighbors. This aloneness is spiritual, emotional, relational, and cultural. It's nearly impossible to escape.

The drama of human aloneness is captured by the apostle Paul in Eph. 2:11-12, but there is more. He also captures how the grace of Jesus Christ reconciles us to God and, in so doing, reconciles us to one another so that we will never again be alone.

Let these words sink in: from "having no hope and without God in the world" to "reconciled... to God" and "being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." What is the movement of grace? We have gone from being hopeless and alone to being reconciled and inhabited by God, and therefore never alone again! Don't forget to remind yourself again today that as God's child you simply cannot be alone, no matter what you feel."

Candy's thoughts: Isn't it counter-intuitive to think that we can feel more alone in a crowded room of people than when we are actually by ourselves with no one else nearby? I have certainly felt that way in many situations in the past, and I have to admit that thinking of God 'being with me' is not the first thought that pops into my mind. Mostly I have wanted to escape the situation and flee to a more comfortable place. But understanding how we got to this "universal experience" of loneliness (think Genesis 3) to where we are going (think heaven) might aid us when feeling abandoned by the world that threatens to undo us. God has graciously provided the means by which we can move from isolation to eternal belonging. We are not alone.