Not Alone

Okay, the first thing to say is thanks for all the comments and emails of encouragement after my last blog entry. The second thing to say is to apologise if I have given the impression I am struggling more than I actually am. Sure, I had a bad day last week but those happen to us all from time to time. Based upon some of the responses I have had I have worried a few people and that was far from my intention. I guess the lesson for me to learn is when posting here is to think through in more detail how people a long way away are going to interpret what I have written.

My intentions when writing my last post were two fold:

1. Writing helps me process what I have been learning and wanted and needed to remember what I wrote in my last post
2. I hoped that in some small way it might offer encouragement to people facing similar struggles

So again, my thanks for all the care and encouragement I have received over the last few days, it has been very much appreciated and my apologies for any worry I have caused.

A few more thoughts of the back of my last post:

Praise God for technology! I was able to video conference with most of family over the weekend and was amazing to not only be able to talk to some of the people I really care about but see them too, and be it in a limited way participate in life back home. My various nephews and nieces performed various party tricks (once they had gotten over some of the novelty of seeing both me and themselves on a computer screen) which was enough to keep me smiling for weeks!

As a result I have found a new level of respect for missionaries in the past and present who have been to countries where communication be it verbal or visual is not possible.

Finally, in response to the question I posed in the title of my last post. Are we ever alone? The answer is no. Each of us has friends & family / people we care about and people who care about us, be it close by or scattered around the world. For those of us who are Christians we have the addition of being part of the global church which means wherever we go there will always members of our Christian family nearby. We can also have the amazing eternal aspect that we will spend eternity with them in heaven. But most importantly we have our relationship with God; something that can never be affected by geography of pretty much anything really.

So (and this will sound clichéd but that does not mean it is untrue) in answer to the question are we ever alone, the answer is no. We will never be alone; the worst we will ever be is physically apart.