There is Never Loneliness

Photography by A. Monaco

"Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is, there is never loneliness."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945)

I am living the beauty of Bonhoeffer's well-crafted statement with the onset of my double vision condition. For the past few months, I have not only experienced the closeness and intimacy of God’s presence, but the love and support of His people - from the women in my small group in Dallas (whom I’ve met with for weekly bible study and prayer the past eight years), to my new friends at the church we worship at when we are in Chicago, to old friends from high school and college Christian fellowships, church friends from our Connecticut and Boston years, as well as friends from seminary and my daughters’ school…they all pray for me (most of them quite ardently) and those nearby come around to provide my husband and me with delicious meals, give me rides, do my grocery, or just to check up and chat.

The common thread connecting me to all these dear friends is our union in Christ. I know that sounds awfully “theological” but I can’t think of a better way of phrasing it. It is indeed our connectedness to Jesus that first brought us together and it is He who binds us together. They love and support me because they first love and have been loved and supported by God.

I am never alone because God is with me and He surrounds me with His people who prays for me, and loves and cares for me.

1 John 4: 7=11
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.