Never Alone

Never Alone

Dec 19, 2013

Never Alone

by Seth Osborn

 

“The LORD your God is with you,

       the mighty warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you;

       in His love He will no longer rebuke you,

       but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)

 

Loneliness is an essential emotion to life. While it might not be a pleasant one when compared to its opposite, it is necessary. How can we understand fellowship if we don’t know how it feels to be alone? Similar to light and dark or sound and silence, one simply cannot exist without the other.

We would do well, though, to remember that we are never truly alone. Even if we feel that all of our human companions have abandoned us, God is present. He is always here and He always loves and cares for you.

 

Tuesday, October 22nd. The dark of the morning was still upon us as I drove my sister, her friend, and myself to an early choir rehearsal for a concert that night. We left at 6:40, the latest time I wanted to leave. That would give us five minutes to find a place to park and walk up to the school. I drove fast—not absurdly so, but about five miles per hour over the limit.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my sister reach over the passenger seat to grab her friend’s choir outfit. The red dress started to slip into the space between the two front seats. “Careful,” I said, “you’re gonna spill my tea.” The concern was threefold: I didn’t want the dress to get covered in tea, I didn’t want tea all over my car, and I wanted to drink the tea to soothe my throat. I’ve had the “good fortune” of getting a sore throat on the day of a choir concert before.

After a split second of making sure the dress would avoid my drink, I looked back up and noticed that I was drifting off the side of the road. I made a sharp left turn to get back on the pavement. Spinning out. We’re spinning out.

Cries of “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” come from the back seats as my car fishtailed to the right. I spun the steering wheel to the right in an attempt to correct, but that just caused us to fishtail in the other direction.

I drove into the grass off the side of the road. The car is facing more than 90 degrees away from the direction we were initially going. Silence. Then crying from behind me. Nobody had been injured. Just distressed.

If it hadn’t been 6:45 in the morning there would have been more cars. I could have caused a crash. There probably would have been injuries—maybe even fatal ones. Just the day before, many at our school (myself included) had been mourning the death of one of our friends. She had passed away over the weekend. What if I, or worse, my sister and her friend had been piled onto that grief? I trembled the rest of the way to school.

But what struck me most was when I got out of the car. I looked up to the street just in time to see the car that had been behind us drive right past, their speed not even faltering. The school bus that had been in front of us, despite being empty, didn’t stop to see if we were okay either. Even if they did worry about the car that spun out and drove off the road, they were in too much of a hurry to check on us. Wherever they were going was more important than making sure I was okay. I felt alone.

But I wasn’t.

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