They Are Alone

Lately I've been watching music video clips. Two of them were Numb by Linkin Park and Evanescence's Everybody's Fool. I don't want to make this a media studies essay, but I think there's a similarity between the two. The story of the Numb video revolves around a very artistic (and actually pretty) girl who can't seem to fit into anyone around her. She gets into trouble with her college teacher for doodling in class, her mom nags at her incessantly and other girls at school move away whenever she's around. Everybody's Fool tells an almost opposite story about a different girl. The girl, played by Amy Lee, is an outwardly successful celebrity that appears in commercials and on magazine covers. But while playing the glamorous star, her inside is hurting, feeling betrayed by the very image she is portraying to the world.

In both videos, both girls end up hurting themselves as a result of their frustration; the Numb girl has self-inflicted scars along her arms, and Amy Lee's character smashes the mirror that reflects her image in self-rage, and cuts her hand in the process. The first girl is not liked by anyone, and the second has a lot of admirers. Yet they both feel alone.

Hurt, pain, rejection and self-deceit can become a cancer that destroys us from the inside out. I feel this even now, and I cry for release. But while I know that there is Someone that I can cry my heart and eyes out to, I know there is a multitude of people, young and old, men and women, who are frustrated and angry, at themselves and others. And there seems to be no one that cares. God is there for them, of course, but they simply don't know this. And that's why they feel so alone in their pain.

At the end of the Numb video, the girl runs into the church building where Linkin Park can be seen performing during the duration of the video. But there is no one there; she is still alone. What about the Church as the body of Christ? When someone like her walks into our midst, will she find someone that embodies the healing love of the Father? Or will she still be alone?

When You Pray to Die

My friend, I read recently that life is guaranteed to give us pain. How true. There are even times that not to live at all seems better than to live with that pain. Yes, there might be times when we quite literally are dying for the end of our sorrow, an eternal escape from hurt and fear. There might be times when we have had enough, and we desire death. And we pray to die.

Friend, I write these words not out of theoretical ideas. Yes, even now such a longing for a hasty end haunts my very soul. Others might say what pitiable and weak creatures we are to be trapped in such misery, even as our hearts are worn out from crying out day and night for an end to our pain. ‘Why can’t you just stand tall and have faith that God will help you?’ they might say to us. But you know, and I know, that it isn’t that simple.

In this dark pit of despair, I remember a prophet of God who also once cried to Him for death. Just after he miraculously defeated hundreds of Baal prophets in a dramatic showdown, Elijah was overwhelmed by fear for his life, and he fled because of Jezebel’s threat (1 Kings 19:1-8). And in hiding he cried to God, ‘I’ve had enough, Lord. Take my life; I’m no better than my ancestors!’

Sounds familiar, my friend? Of all people it was this heavyweight prophet of God (one of only three people in history to be lifted alive to heaven, and who later appeared along with Moses in Jesus’ transfiguration) that uttered what could be considered one of the darkest, most pessimistic, most despairing prayer that can be found in the Bible. Other heroes of faith like David and Job have also expressed such bleak words of supplication at their lowest points. Perhaps that is also our prayer at this moment.

And how did God respond to Elijah? Did He get angry with him because of his lack of faith? A simplistic ‘be it according to your faith’, so to speak? By all means, no. Instead, He gently woke the prophet up and gave him the nourishment he desperately needed (vv. 5-6). ‘You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies,’ David had written many years before that (Psalm 23:5), and here Elijah saw that it was literally true.

The Lord knows the limits of our strength. He told Elijah to eat and drink because He knew that without that nourishment he would not be able to make the journey (v. 7). ‘Without Me you can’t do anything’ Jesus tells us (John 15:4-5). He knows that without his continuous support, our mortal abilities are very limited. Hence the bread and water.

And what are we to do then? At times like this to some degree there is often the temptation to bring about an end to our life -and thus our suffering- by our own hands. But despite his unbearable longing that his pain would end Elijah realized that His life was not really in his own hands. It was in God’s. Indeed, this is why he asked God to end it for him instead of ending it himself like Judas did. This you and I must realize, my friend, that our lives and our hearts are in His hands.

Now when God gives us strength, it might not look enough for us to go on. The ‘feast’ that God gave Elijah looked more like prison food (bread and water) than a kingly feast. Yet that bread was still freshly baking (v. 6) and it gave him the strength to walk on for forty days and forty night straight! (v. 8) Likewise, friend, we might not be able to see anything before us that would give us enough strength to go through these suffocating moments. But I like to believe that it is enough.

My friend, I have to admit that even now my soul still longs for a quick end to this suffering, and I am wondering where this strength from God might be. But I want to believe in the grace of God that gives us strength despite our weaknesses. “We must somehow believe that unearned suffering is redemptive,” Martin Luther King said. Perhaps then, like Elijah’s, God will even turn this unbearable pain of ours not only into joy but also into a path for His loving power (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

The Original Unrequitted Lover

Relatively many people I know have experienced the real-life tragic event normally termed 'unrequitted love'. I myself have experienced the bitter anger and seemingly unsoothable pain that having unreciprocated romantic love can bring, even more than once. Unrequitted love can seriously wound those who experience it, and even leave a deep, traumatic emotional scar that has to be resolved if future relationships are to work unhindered by the past.

I've been asking for a long time why unrequitted love happens. More personally, I've asked so many times why it's happened to me repeatedly. I think in general there are a few reasons why we can love someone who doesn't feel the same about us. For instance, we can simply love the wrong person or for the wrong reason, or both. The terrible thing about romantic feelings is that they can strike without warning and haunt us day and night. And the worse thing about it? We have absolutely no right for that person to respond favorably to our feelings. It's really a no-win situation that we never asked for and probably would find very hard to resolve without a lot of hard work and some heartbreak.

But there is one individual that has the right to be loved back. And ironically, this individual is also the same one that has suffered more instances of unrequitted love than anyone that has ever lived. This individual, the original unrequitted lover, is God.We should by right love Him, first of all because He loved him. Our love for Him should be natural, just as a child should love her parents. Whilst anyone can claim that he loved someone first, only God can claim to have given the great sacrifice that His selfless love has made Him do (Romans 5:8). The original unrequitted lover is also the original selfless lover, because He is love itself (1 John 4:16).

But such is the selflessness of His love that whilst Love itself has suffered the most cases of unrequitted love, He nevertheless never forces anyone to love Him. Many of us, including myself, have demanded love from others, and that is a selfish thing. But the example of the Father tells us that true love is not something that we can force out of anyone. God has been angered and frustrated His people so many times ever since His love was betrayed. His relationship with the Israelites in the Old Testament is a documented example of this, but He has yet persisted in loving them (and us), for that is what love does (1 Corinthians 3:4). And whilst He has been repeatedly infuriated by their betrayal and punished them for it, He has never made them love Him the way we program robots to do what we want.

But why have I called God the original unrequitted lover, and the one Person who has suffered the most -and worst- cases of such one-side love?

Look around you. God loves each and every one of the people that work, play and live around us enough to send His Son to die for them (John 3:16). Yet statistically, how many of us human beings have actually responded to this great love of His? How many even know of that love? God is like Edmond Rostand's Cyrano, whose love though great is unknown by the very object of that love. He is like a father who is hated by his children despite the great sacrifices he has given in their lives (Matthew 23:37). Only God's beloved ones, his ungrateful children, are too many to count. And I believe it pains Him much more than we can possibly imagine.

I like to think that we who have tasted -or are tasting- the unbearably bitter taste of unrequitted love are privy to how God feels about the world, and about those whom He loves so dearly but do not love Him back. It is a comfort to realize that He personally knows how it feels for us to experience such a love. And we should also realize that this personal knowledge comes with a price; what we desperately feel for a lover, He feels for an entire world.