Never Alone

Romans 8:26-27, 34
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
Who then can condemn? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

There are moments—sometimes days, weeks and months—when I feel so very alone, estranged and cut off from the loving embrace of Jesus. I feel the weight of silence pressing in my heart as my listening is returned with an empty buzz, and it seems that the reassuring whispers of the Holy Spirit are absent. I feel very small and unlovable under the unflinching gaze of God.

But I am not abandoned.

The loneliness of those moments transforms an ordinary life into a prayer. The entirety of my being—every word and thought—cries out to God as a prayer, a cry expressed to God through the wordless groanings of the Spirit.

The Son, who walks silently and unseen beside me, cries to his Father on my behalf, painfully identifying with my sense of abandonment in ways that I can’t even begin to grasp. His empathy is written plainly in his wounds.

And my Father, the one who seems so distant, searches the depths of my heart and bears the full measure of my fear and heartache, unfiltered by a sporadically rational mind. All the while he listens, he feels, he knows more than even I can tell as it is groaned to him by the Holy Spirit and implored to him by the Son.

He is with me. They—the three, the One—are with me. In the confused loneliness of my search for God I am struggling to find the words to speak a language he invented and walking a road he knows. Despite the perceived distance we have never been closer.

No wonder I am cherished. One member groans with me, another cries for me, and the other searches me and knows me. I am not alone, I am known.