Flashpoint is a television series about a fictional elite tactical unit called the Strategic Response Unit (SRU). They are an emergency response team. In each episode, this team faces a threatening situation that requires them to swing into action. Often, when the negotiator of the group talks to the person creating the emergency, he tries to figure out what brought this person to this point of extreme action. And when he gets behind the reason for the extreme emotions, I’ve noticed that he says. “I get it. You aren’t alone.”
Through very intense, fictional situations, Flashpoint fleshes out this truth: When we feel alone, we make very bad decisions.
In my book, Angkura: The Fight for Hope, the main character is a 16 year-old who feels alone. And she makes a poor relationship choice because she doesn’t want to feel alone. But throughout the story, as she learns how deeply she is loved, and that she is not alone, she begins making choices motivated by courage instead of fear – the fear of being alone.
We all have a fear of being alone, of being misunderstood, of not being valued, of feeling disconnected.
And when we feel those things, we often make our own poor choices in order to avoid feeling those things. We may seek to numb the pain, or we grasp at any relationship that we think will help us not feel that way.
This is the basic, broken, human condition.
The beautiful, glorious truth is that we are not alone. We are of great value to the God who formed us, and we are only disconnected as long as we keep Him at a distance.
It isn’t surprising that the enemy of our souls works overtime to make sure we feel alone. We were created for fellowship with God and with other people, and that is where the enemy strikes.
It’s a very effective strategy. And we can only fight his strategy with truth.
Psalm 139:1-18 paints a beautiful picture of the way God knows us and cares for us, intimately, gently, completely.
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.
For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.
I get it. You are not alone. These words are such a comfort, and there is good reason for this. We weren’t meant to be alone. And we aren’t.