When my father and my mother forsake me, the LORD will take care of me

Probably most of us have experienced abandonment and rejection at some point in time. And it’s no fun! Having been divorced twice, in spite of every attempt to prevent it, I know something of these feelings. In John chapter 14 Jesus tells his disciples, and us through them, that he will not leave us orphaned. Though I was not an orphan, I have come to recognize that I had an orphan spirit.

In this Psalm, David tells us the cure for this. No doubt he, like myself, learned this the hard way. I was already a Christian at the time of my second divorce, and I did have a relationship with the Lord, but I was still very dependent on my earthly relationships, and no less than the first divorce, I was devastated by the second.

After a couple of years, when it became clear that any reconciliation was not going to happen anytime soon, I fell back into my pre-Christian addictions. Anything to dull the pain! But it didn't work, in fact it got worse, compounded by guilt and shame. I was trying to fill the gaping hole in my heart that only He can fill. All the time he was reaching out to me, inviting me into his embrace, waiting to be gracious to me (Isaiah 30:18). Eventually He got through to me.

There is a saying that I really relate to very well at this point in time, it is that you don’t know that God is all you need, until God is all you have.

And I see many around me struggling with the very same thing that I struggled with. And I know that the solution that I found, or rather that he gave to me, is the solution that they need. But it seems that we have to come to the end of ourselves, that we have to come to the point of desperation before we are truly willing to surrender everything to him.

I would never have chosen this path to finding a deeper relationship with him, but I cannot regret it. In the end I found that not only did he suffer for me, but that he suffers with me, and uses that suffering to bring me into freedom, peace, hope and joy in relationship with him.

Father, for those who are struggling and reading this post, I ask you to continue to reach out to them, and to give them the grace that they need to cast everything on you. Bring them through the loneliness, emptiness and the pain and give them the true comfort that only you can give. In Jesus name