Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye.
~Helen Keller
So the Jews grumbled about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, Whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me – not that anyone has seen the Father except He who is from God; He has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, He will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh.” The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on Me, He also will live because of Me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as He taught at Capernaum. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? … After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to Whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that You are the Holy One of God.”
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, in John 6
Oh beloved, it is true.
The fact is, we are going to die alone, to face the One Who has always been with us inside. And also, the process of getting there can be so painful. We can feel the loss in our lives in so many ways.
And, all along the way, the little tentacles of what we thought we were connected to, actually turn out to be nothing. We find that, though relationship is the final stuff of reality, there are few – very few – who will truly enter into it with us.
Said simply: Few even care if we live, or if we die.
Pastors in the field cover their own asses.
Coworkers on the same mission, run for cover the moment fire comes in.
Leaders of organizations go mute when we express a real need.
People we thought were friends, won’t lift a finger to help as your family is being torn apart.
We are. torn. to. bits.
And nobody cares. Not really, anyway.
But, it is true, that while no earthly person may care, one True Human does. Hannah Hurnard speaks well to this:
No soul can be really at rest until it has given up all dependence on everything else and has been forced to depend on the Lord alone. As long as our expectation is from other things, nothing but disappointment awaits us. Feelings may change, and will change with our changing circumstances; doctrines and dogmas may be upset; Christian work may come to naught; prayers may seem to lose their fervency; promises may seem to fail; everything that we have believed in or depended upon may seem to be swept away, and only God is left, just God, the bare God,
if I may be allowed the expression;
simply and only God.
Can we see it?
It’s OK.
No one who was supposedly with us in the first place was ever going to meet our needs anyway. There is no need to get mad at someone who could not do what we are needing in the first place. It’s like getting upset with a blind man for not being able to read a billboard.
Peter got it right. Peter caught it. He wasn’t desperate or just giving up. He understood that Jesus was everything, and nothing else was going to meet Peter where he needed to be met. Peter realized that, no matter how hard the path or depth of what it was going to take to know Jesus – Peter was going to do just that.
And it was in that space that Jesus told Peter that he had gotten it exactly right.
So, are you feeling abandoned by your friends? Do you feel like they don’t care? They don’t. Not really. And, if we are honest, we realize that we all fall ever so short with our companions too. By ALL MEANS, love your friends the best you know how. However, realize that you will never be what they really need, nor will they be it for you.
Tonight is your night. Know that no earthly human really cares about you.
And that’s OK.
Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you, the world doesn’t care if you live or die.
~ Anthony Doerr
