This post is another attempt at being a bit more pastoral for the benefit of other pilgrims who are just passing through, to grieve with those who are grieving, and try to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the Law of Christ.
In some of my more recent attempts to comfort my spouse, we've spent dozens of hours in the past month discussing the prospect of polygyny. My wife was wrestling with feelings of abandonment. Even the mere prospect of polygyny is extremely isolating.
We can find threads here on BiblicalFamilies of people working up the courage to finally tell a friend, and so on. Our whole social fabric and support network is shredded and useless once it comes time to roll up our sleeves and critically evaluate how influenced our ideas around marriage have been informed by Greco-Roman culture, feminism, and basically everything but the Bible.
So during one of our interactions, she asked me an interesting question:
"Do you think John the Baptist felt abandoned by the Lord while he was in prison?" (Matthew 11:2-3)
Yes, and he's not alone. Pun intended. The Bible is filled with people who felt abandoned and/or lonely at various times. Let's consider a few.
Beginning with Adam, who surely felt abandoned after he was forced to wander from the Garden of Eden wearing skins with the flaming sword of the Cherubim to his back. (Genesis 3:23-24)
How about Noah, a preacher of righteousness for 120 years (2 Peter 2:5 KJV), who by the numbers was so ineffective, humanly speaking, that he would've made Billy Graham blush. In his spare time he built an ark roughly 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high, prophesying a flood, when in those days it had not yet rained. (Genesis 2:5-6; Hebrews 11:7).
Abram (or Abraham) was called to leave everything he knew in the land of Ur, including his friends and family, not knowing where he was even headed. (Hebrews 11:8)
Isaac, promised as the child of laughter, nearly died alone on a mountain with no one but his father and a knife, not knowing until the very last moment that a ram waited in the thicket. (Genesis 22:1-13)
Jacob fled his brother’s wrath with nothing but a staff, sleeping on a stone pillow in a strange land, dreaming of a ladder because there was, quite literally, no one else around to talk to. (Genesis 28:10-15)
Leah, unloved and passed over for her sister, named her sons out of sheer loneliness, hoping each birth might finally win her husband’s affection. (Genesis 29:31-34)
Joseph was stripped of his coat, thrown in a pit by his own brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, and forgotten in an Egyptian prison for two full years after doing a fellow prisoner a favor. (Genesis 37:23-28; 40:14-15, 23)
Moses spent forty years as a fugitive shepherd in Midian, estranged from his people and his calling, before a burning bush interrupted his obscurity. (Exodus 2:11-15; Acts 7:29-30)
Hagar was cast out into the wilderness with a water skin and a child, weeping at a distance so she wouldn’t have to watch him die, until the Lord Himself found her there. (Genesis 21:14-19)
Job lost his children, his health, his wealth, and finally his wife’s support (“curse God and die”), and then had to sit through his friends’ theology lectures on top of it all. (Job 1:13-19; 2:9-10; 19:13-19)
Naomi returned to Bethlehem so hollowed out by grief that she told the women to stop calling her Naomi (“pleasant”) and call her Mara (“bitter”) instead. (Ruth 1:19-21)
Hannah was provoked year after year by a rival wife, wept so bitterly before the Lord that the priest assumed she was drunk, and had no one in her own house who understood her grief. (1 Samuel 1:6-16)
David hid in caves from a king who wanted him dead, writing psalms in the dark about being forgotten “as a dead man out of mind.” (1 Samuel 22:1-2; Psalm 31:12; Psalm 142)
Elijah, fresh off routing 450 prophets of Baal, collapsed under a juniper tree and told God he was the only faithful one left and would rather die than keep going. (1 Kings 19:4, 10, 14)
Jeremiah was mocked, beaten, put in stocks, and lowered into a muddy pit to starve, all for faithfully preaching a message nobody wanted to hear. (Jeremiah 20:7-10; 38:6)
Jonah sat alone outside Nineveh under a withering gourd, so consumed by his own misery that he asked God to let him die rather than live with how things had turned out. (Jonah 4:1-3, 8)
Daniel was thrown into a den of lions for the crime of praying toward Jerusalem three times a day, with not a single advocate willing to risk the king’s wrath on his behalf. (Daniel 6:10-23)
Ezekiel sat stunned and silent among the exiles for seven days, so overwhelmed by what he’d seen and been called to that he couldn’t speak. (Ezekiel 3:14-15)
Mary bore the shame of an unexplained pregnancy in a small town, and her own betrothed quietly planned to put her away before an angel intervened. (Matthew 1:18-20)
Jesus Himself asked Peter, James, and John to stay awake with Him in Gethsemane, and found them asleep not once but three times in His darkest hour. (Matthew 26:36-45)
And at the cross, the sinless Son of God cried out the one thing no other name on this list ever truly had to say and mean in full: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
Peter, after swearing he’d die before denying the Lord, broke down and wept bitterly alone after the cock crowed, utterly isolated by his own failure. (Matthew 26:75)
Paul, at his final trial, wrote to Timothy that at his first defense no man stood with him, but all men forsook him — and still asked that it not be laid to their charge. (2 Timothy 4:16)
So next time you're feeling lonely or abandoned, remember you're in good company.
Grace and peace.
In some of my more recent attempts to comfort my spouse, we've spent dozens of hours in the past month discussing the prospect of polygyny. My wife was wrestling with feelings of abandonment. Even the mere prospect of polygyny is extremely isolating.
We can find threads here on BiblicalFamilies of people working up the courage to finally tell a friend, and so on. Our whole social fabric and support network is shredded and useless once it comes time to roll up our sleeves and critically evaluate how influenced our ideas around marriage have been informed by Greco-Roman culture, feminism, and basically everything but the Bible.
So during one of our interactions, she asked me an interesting question:
"Do you think John the Baptist felt abandoned by the Lord while he was in prison?" (Matthew 11:2-3)
Yes, and he's not alone. Pun intended. The Bible is filled with people who felt abandoned and/or lonely at various times. Let's consider a few.
Beginning with Adam, who surely felt abandoned after he was forced to wander from the Garden of Eden wearing skins with the flaming sword of the Cherubim to his back. (Genesis 3:23-24)
How about Noah, a preacher of righteousness for 120 years (2 Peter 2:5 KJV), who by the numbers was so ineffective, humanly speaking, that he would've made Billy Graham blush. In his spare time he built an ark roughly 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high, prophesying a flood, when in those days it had not yet rained. (Genesis 2:5-6; Hebrews 11:7).
Abram (or Abraham) was called to leave everything he knew in the land of Ur, including his friends and family, not knowing where he was even headed. (Hebrews 11:8)
Isaac, promised as the child of laughter, nearly died alone on a mountain with no one but his father and a knife, not knowing until the very last moment that a ram waited in the thicket. (Genesis 22:1-13)
Jacob fled his brother’s wrath with nothing but a staff, sleeping on a stone pillow in a strange land, dreaming of a ladder because there was, quite literally, no one else around to talk to. (Genesis 28:10-15)
Leah, unloved and passed over for her sister, named her sons out of sheer loneliness, hoping each birth might finally win her husband’s affection. (Genesis 29:31-34)
Joseph was stripped of his coat, thrown in a pit by his own brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, and forgotten in an Egyptian prison for two full years after doing a fellow prisoner a favor. (Genesis 37:23-28; 40:14-15, 23)
Moses spent forty years as a fugitive shepherd in Midian, estranged from his people and his calling, before a burning bush interrupted his obscurity. (Exodus 2:11-15; Acts 7:29-30)
Hagar was cast out into the wilderness with a water skin and a child, weeping at a distance so she wouldn’t have to watch him die, until the Lord Himself found her there. (Genesis 21:14-19)
Job lost his children, his health, his wealth, and finally his wife’s support (“curse God and die”), and then had to sit through his friends’ theology lectures on top of it all. (Job 1:13-19; 2:9-10; 19:13-19)
Naomi returned to Bethlehem so hollowed out by grief that she told the women to stop calling her Naomi (“pleasant”) and call her Mara (“bitter”) instead. (Ruth 1:19-21)
Hannah was provoked year after year by a rival wife, wept so bitterly before the Lord that the priest assumed she was drunk, and had no one in her own house who understood her grief. (1 Samuel 1:6-16)
David hid in caves from a king who wanted him dead, writing psalms in the dark about being forgotten “as a dead man out of mind.” (1 Samuel 22:1-2; Psalm 31:12; Psalm 142)
Elijah, fresh off routing 450 prophets of Baal, collapsed under a juniper tree and told God he was the only faithful one left and would rather die than keep going. (1 Kings 19:4, 10, 14)
Jeremiah was mocked, beaten, put in stocks, and lowered into a muddy pit to starve, all for faithfully preaching a message nobody wanted to hear. (Jeremiah 20:7-10; 38:6)
Jonah sat alone outside Nineveh under a withering gourd, so consumed by his own misery that he asked God to let him die rather than live with how things had turned out. (Jonah 4:1-3, 8)
Daniel was thrown into a den of lions for the crime of praying toward Jerusalem three times a day, with not a single advocate willing to risk the king’s wrath on his behalf. (Daniel 6:10-23)
Ezekiel sat stunned and silent among the exiles for seven days, so overwhelmed by what he’d seen and been called to that he couldn’t speak. (Ezekiel 3:14-15)
Mary bore the shame of an unexplained pregnancy in a small town, and her own betrothed quietly planned to put her away before an angel intervened. (Matthew 1:18-20)
Jesus Himself asked Peter, James, and John to stay awake with Him in Gethsemane, and found them asleep not once but three times in His darkest hour. (Matthew 26:36-45)
And at the cross, the sinless Son of God cried out the one thing no other name on this list ever truly had to say and mean in full: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
Peter, after swearing he’d die before denying the Lord, broke down and wept bitterly alone after the cock crowed, utterly isolated by his own failure. (Matthew 26:75)
Paul, at his final trial, wrote to Timothy that at his first defense no man stood with him, but all men forsook him — and still asked that it not be laid to their charge. (2 Timothy 4:16)
So next time you're feeling lonely or abandoned, remember you're in good company.
Grace and peace.
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