FRIDAYS WITH FRED: IT’S ONLY YOU
When life gets so hard, we seem to be in a place we cannot describe. In fact, we do want other people, but it seems to be ONLY YOU. Please let me explain.
- When cancer is so difficult that the doctor does not have answers, then family members cannot help. It is only you.
- When your husband cooks a wonderful BBQ and later falls asleep in his chair, only to be discovered in the morning still asleep, but motionless, not breathing. Then you discover It is only you.
- When your fiance is suddenly killed in an ATV accident, then suddenly you find It is only you.
- When your 18-year-old child dies of drug addiction, and you have suffered beyond measure, then you know It is only you.
- When all solutions from others do not help, then you find yourself in the one place where It is only you.
Certainly, the love and constant care of my dear wife Susie and the passion of my children and grandchildren exceed all my personal expectations these past 11 years. How significant and precious they are to me.
Yet, in the middle of the dark nights when I am all alone, there is only one other who is there. It is my One and Only, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has become my deepest comfort — a Divine comfort if you will. He only turns my pain into peace. He only takes my hopelessness to a place of hopefulness. He only turns my fear into praise.
Why? Because Jesus is the same forever. His love never changes and is inexhaustible. He never ever leaves me, not for a second. He only can understand my deepest yearnings and my soul. He always steers me into His love and safe pasture. He only is the “love that will not let me go.”
In the late 1800s, George Matheson discovered this. As he was studying at Glasgow University, his deteriorating eyesight led to blindness. He lived with heartache when his fiancee, unwilling to be married to a blind man, broke their engagement and returned his ring. His only consolation was God’s love, unlimited and unconditional, but certain and not withdrawn. Out of this pain of rejection, he wrote: “O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in You. I give You back the life I owe that, in Your ocean depths its flow, may richer, fuller be.”
