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I am a pastor and a clinical psychotherapist. My life's passion is defining healthiness from a human perspective and paralleling it to the holiness of God, divine perspective. Shifting perspectives creates a paradigm that is alongside of rather than over and against. The parakalein of God and the paradoxes of humanity are redefined. Humanity is all about winning and yet we are losing ground everywhere. Divinity is all about letting go of the desire to win and the fear of loss. The Divine embraces the world with loving care regardless of anything.

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The Feeling of Abandonment

Posted by Don Paine

"I feel all alone"

Many people in crowded cities and in large families, in isolated villages and small families say these all too common words.

When I fee all alone, it is an accurate statement of how I feel.  It is not an accurate statement of reality.

When Jesus hung on the cross he said,  "My God My God Why have you abandoned me".  It was how he felt.  He felt abandoned detached.  In our day many feel abandoned and detached.  Attachment disorders and  abandonment issues are rife.

I have heard the explanation of Jesus words above as:  God cannot look on sin so when God put our sin on his son he turned away, and Jesus experienced that as abandonment.  Really?  the God who created all things, who looks on all things, and is never seduced into anything.  God could not look at his son suffering or on sin without being engulfed in that sin?  Really?  So here is an alternative understanding of this from my life, experience, and understanding.  It may not be accurate but it is a true thought.

First, I am easily drawn into wrong thoughts because of blinders in me.  God not so much.  God looked on his son and the suffering and saw the work of redemption being done.  He hated what he was watching but did it out of love.  God did not abandon Jesus no matter what it felt like.  God loved the son through this valley of the shadow of death, God was with him!!!  In Psalm 22 which Jesus was quoting, the psalmist concludes with that reflection, "you did not leave me".  So here is the amazing truth for your soul today.  Regardless of how alone you feel and literally are in the physical plane of life, you are never alone in reality.  When Jesus said, "Lo I am with you always, even to the end", he was speaking accurate truth.  When you feel abandoned, it is a true feeling it is just not a true reality.  Reality check:  God never leaves you.  There are no qualifications to "Lo I am with you always"except the "to the end" part.  That is because "in the end there is no end" to God's presence.  we will know for all eternity what we sometimes question in the is reality:  God with us always.

Be comforted by the truth that you are not along for God is with you no matter what.  Whatever takes on a new meaning if we say, whatever God is there! Whatever!

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