I wonder if Jesus ever felt lonely.

January 10, 2022

---

I wonder if Jesus ever felt lonely.

Even among crowds of people, even when sharing a meal and the hospitality of a friend, even when walking along a road with his 12, I wonder if he ever felt loneliness. The kind that comes from deep inside, and is not based on your surroundings.

Reading scripture, I think he must have. Especially that night in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew what faced him. He asked his friends to pray and keep watch, but they didn't understand. They fell

asleep. Even if they hadn't, though, I don't know that it would have mattered, because the loneliness he felt came from knowing that no one could share his suffering or take his place on that cross. It came from being the only one who understood what was about to happen.

The only one who could fulfill and walk out his purpose. It was a loneliness of the most personal extent. A loneliness of the soul.

I often feel that same kind of loneliness.

I can be in a room full of people, surrounded by friends, and still feel a deep longing to belong. I can be sitting across from a dear friend and still feel desperate to be seen and understood.

It's the loneliness of being a survivor of abuse. It's the loneliness of creating in myself a ministry. It's the loneliness of school work, while working so hard to pursue your calling on the side. It's the loneliness of anxiety. It's the loneliness of having rebuilt a relationship that was once in shattered pieces. It's the loneliness of not ever getting it all just right.

And while you might know what it means to be some of these things, there is no one who knows what it is to be all of these things. And that's the part that's so lonely.

Knowing I'm the only one to have walked this exact path, to wear these precise scars.

The only one who understands what's in my heart, how my thoughts move, what I'm afraid of, what I need, what fills me up. The only one.

Please don't misunderstand. I'm not comparing myself to Jesus in even the slightest way. The loneliness he felt that night was based on a coming sacrifice I can't begin to imagine.

But, I do take comfort in knowing that while he might have felt that same kind of loneliness of being "the only one", he was never truly alone.

God was with him in the Garden that night. God was with him always. And yet, Jesus was "anguished and distressed." He told his friends, "My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death."

(Matthew 26:37-38)

I take comfort in knowing that Jesus not only understands my deep loneliness, but He is walking with me through it.