The longer I live the more I have come to realize that most of us, if we are awake and aware, will taste to a far greater extent than we could have anticipated the unrelenting solitude of the fellowship of Christ's suffering. Whatever form it takes, whatever course it pursues and pushes you through, it is exquisitely singular and, at times, isolating with a mental pressure that escapes expression. Most of us have an idea rattling around in our heads that we can endure anything as long as we have our family and/or friends. This is a lovely idea, but not really a truth, because Christ suffered alone and died utterly alone. He was abandoned by all whom He loved best. To participate in this experience we must of necessity enter that door and shuffle down that path, sometimes clawing and blind, in the most unimaginable, tearful, awful intimacy possible with Jesus. And when we have inched along the tightrope of darkness and missed our grasp and come to the place when letting go is no longer a choice -- it is a stark reality of what we loved most being plucked mercilessly from our arms -- it is then and only then, that the everlasting arms can appear. In that most cherished moment in all of eternity it dawns unmistakably that we are not moving inexorably alone, but are being carried by the One who fashioned the stars and all of space and time. All can forsake me. Jesus will stand with me, beside me, over me and even cradling me. He will stand. And that is it and that is all. To sample that severe mercy is to slip the bonds of time and the constraints of past and present. Eternity answers with just simplicity. I am.
