“In Prayer We are not Alone,” by Andrew J. Schatkin

“In Prayer We are not Alone,” by Andrew J. Schatkin

All of us as we live our lives and gain experience and knowledge of the world we live in come to know that we are essentially alone in the world. We come into the world alone and leave it so. We live in an aura of friendly geniality but it is only a facade and nothing more. When we become sick and grow old and ill and fail our so-called friends and neighbors cease to know us at all. When we enter into our last days and are sick, ill, and dying no one knows. I am told that in Veterans Hospitals where the patients often have no limbs or arms and even no face left their wives even cease to visit them. When we are in trouble or difficulty we are very much alone. This is the reality of a world essentially without and lacking in love and governed by the forces of self, self love and outright self concern if not selfishness. And so I say again despite being surrounded by smiles and laughter, our loneliness and the loneliness of us all is the truth we must face that we are once and for all alone. Jesus, the miracle worker and agent of God's love was persecuted, punished and executed and suffered greatly and the son of god was alone as no other has even been alone. 

And so in prayer we try to break out our loneliness and aloneness in this life to come to know the source of love and life in god and if you will in Christ. In prayer we take up the offer of the only real relationship possible a relationship that will never fail and will be everlasting because of its truth and reality not based on self but on real love and caring. In prayer we have left and abandoned the shallow lies of this world and its falsity for mutual love between god and man that will never fail. In Christ and in God the father, we have left the loneliness of this world and is shallowness for the eternal love of god a love as there is and can be no other.