When You Feel Alone – by Ella Rodionoff
Jan 31, 2016 1950
Hebrews 13:5 tells us that ‘God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” And sometimes that is easy to believe – when everything is going the way you want it to, and you can feel God’s presence in your life. But there are other times when life doesn’t play out the way you want. And it is during those moments that it is easy to forget God’s promise.
In Luke 24 we are told about two of Jesus’ followers walking from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. As they walked they were talking about Jesus’ death that had occurred two days before. It was that this time that Jesus, now resurrected, came and walked beside them, but they didn’t know who he was.
The Bible tells us that their faces were ‘downcast’, and as they talked to the stranger who was actually Jesus, it becomes clear that they had hit a low point in their lives. They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel, but now that hope was gone. Although they had heard reports that Jesus had risen, they didn’t know what to make of them. Instead they were overwhelmed with a sense of defeat. They felt that Jesus had left them alone.
It was then that Jesus began explaining to them what they had missed. Verse 27 says that ‘beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’ He explained that it had already been foretold that he would die. But more importantly that he would rise again. It was in this dark period of their lives that Jesus reminded them of the hope found in scripture.
When they had reached Emmaus they invited Jesus to stay with them. And as they were about to eat, they recognised who Jesus was. At this moment he disappeared. Suddenly what happened on their journey made sense. Verse 32 says ‘they asked each other, “were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened scripture to us?”’
Upon realizing that Jesus was alive, they immediately returned to Jerusalem, their hope returned. Their sadness was replaced with joy. The low point had ended.
And sometimes we are a lot like those two men. In life we can experience the feeling of defeat. We experience times when everything seems to be going wrong. We experience low points in our lives. And in those times we can forget the promises the Bible makes. We can forget that God said he would never leave us or forsake us. And we can feel alone.
But the truth is that Jesus is always with us. He is with us even through those hard times, just like he promised he would be. He is there even when we don’t recognize that he is. And he is reminding us that despite what has happened, or the pain that we feel, our hope is not gone. Because he has risen from the dead, and because he is with us, our hope is never gone.
– Ella Rodionoff
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