Week 18: Day 1

Intro: Hello and welcome to Orbit, a short reflection to help you put God at the centre of your life from the team behind Satellites - I'm Jenny Flannagan, I manage Alumina, Youthscape’s online support program for teenagers struggling with self-harm. Each weekday we share a little bit of the Bible with you, give you a chance to pray and think about it, and provide you with one practical way to put it into practice today. This week we’re marking National Mental Health Awareness Week with some reflections that focus on this year’s theme, which is loneliness.

Bible: Today's reading comes from Lamentations 1:16-17:

This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed.

Zion stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her.

Thoughts: With today’s reading I’ve thrown us right down in the middle of the pain of loneliness. No gentle start, no funny story. We’re straight into isolation, tears and destitution. Maybe the pain of loneliness is a familiar place for you, and that’s where you feel like you’re starting the week anyway. Or maybe this feels a bit brutal for a Monday. And that’s a really interesting place for us to start – reading these verses that are so full of distress and asking ourselves how we are with pain. Are you someone who hasn’t had to go through much that is painful in life? Or are you someone who knows what suffering means? If you have experienced suffering, how are you with that? I’m not asking if you like it, but what do you do with your pain? Do you swallow it down and hide it, push it down so far till you almost can’t feel it anymore? Do you make room for it, let it be your companion, find ways to talk about it with others? Or do you feel like you’re swimming in it, and sometimes drowning in it?

The Bible makes space for our pain. That’s the place we can start this week. Lamentations, which is the book we’re going to be looking at this week, is a mountain of pain. There’s a blast of hope in the middle, but then more pain and suffering afterwards. The writers, and then the editors and compilers of the Bible did not edit it out, worry that it might be too much for some people, or too discouraging - although Lamentations doesn’t tend to make it into too many Bible colouring books at Sunday school.

As a counsellor and therapist I know how crucial it is for all of us to have our feelings validated. To know that they matter, that they have been heard and recognised, that we’re not ‘just being emotional’ or ‘over-reacting’ or any of the others ways our feelings get dismissed. God does not dismiss our pain. He or she doesn’t look away from it or roll their eyes or tell us to change the subject. Reading these words, and even the whole of chapter 1 of Lamentations tells us that God makes room for our pain, God knows how dark it really gets and doesn’t want us to pretend otherwise. And God wants us to have a voice when we’re in in that place. God wants to hear, to be with us in it.

And doesn’t that speak to our loneliness? That in our darkest most lonely moments to know that we’re not alone, and that the one who is with us isn’t trying to shut us up or get us to think of something more cheerful. God is there.

Prayer: God, thank you for making room for my pain. Thank you for noticing and understanding and for staying with me. Help me to bring my pain to you and to remember that you are here with me in it. Amen

Reflection: Let’s take a few moments to reflect.

Action: Every day on Orbit we give you a simple practical challenge to help you put this passage into action in your life. Here's today's:

I’m going to ask you to draw something – but don’t worry, no-one has to see it. I want you to draw a person that represents you, it can be a stick man if you want, and then draw them with lots of bags. When we are in pain it can feel like there’s an invisible weight we’re carrying around with us that other people just don’t see. So I want to invite you today to make space to acknowledge what those invisible bags are for you. It might be experiences you’ve had, either recently or long ago, people you’ve lost, pressures that make life feel hard. Label those bags and then pray to God, telling him or her about the things that are causing you pain right now.

Outro: That's it for today's Orbit. Thanks so much for joining us - we'll be back with another reflection tomorrow.