Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: November 6th

LIFE’S ISOLATIONS

I have trodden the wine-press alone. - Isaiah 63:3

The very things that made the solitude of Christ made its agony. The same characteristics in Jesus Christ which separated Him from men made Him feel, as no other man ever felt, the pain and bitterness of being so separated. Other men wear an armour of selfishness and, alas! of proclivity to evil which makes it less of a torture to be brought close to it. But He stood with bared breast, and every blow struck full home. Christ was lonely in the midst of crowds. It would have been so much easier for Him to have come neither eating nor drinking; or like John the Baptist, to have gone into the desert and lived an ascetic life of outward solitude there. But that could not be. He must be kindly with His kind. He had to live the life which was to be every man’s pattern and inspiration. So He must enter into all common relationships, and hallow ordinary duties and scenes by Himself passing through them. Therefore He came eating and drinking, and sat at feasts where there was no love and scant courtesy, and kept company with men, the very association with whom was a deeper solitude than He would have found in the dreariest wilderness.

Christ’s loneliness deepened as the end drew near. The disciples understood Him even less when He spoke about His death than in the rest of His teaching. He had, in a very special sense, to go down into the valley alone. Death is ever a solitude, and, perhaps, is most terrible because it is. The fondest love can only go with us to the gate. We must part outside the barrier, and all alone pass in and take our journey. But His death, compassed by treachery, and preceded by the flight of His friends and the denial of His chief apostle, was, in a very special sense, a solitary death. The little faith which had feebly been building itself up in some hearts was shattered. The love seemed to have gone. No man in all the world believed in Him now. "We trusted" was the most they would say. And so, wrapped in darkness. He dies, as He had lived, alone! How profoundly must our Lord have felt the pain of His solitude! The thought of His loneliness is made more bitter to Him by its contrast with the companionship which His faithless followers so easily secured. " Ye shall be scattered, each one to his own." They had all congenial surroundings and friends to return to, and, fleeing to that shelter, they leave Him solitary, like a traveller, on a waste unsheltered heath, to meet the whole fury of the storm. ’’His own," to whom He had come with hands outstretched craving a welcome, had turned from Him, and the isolation aggravated even the solemn pains of His test passion.

The piteous petition that came from His lips in Gethsemane reveals this: " My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death. Tarry ye here and watch with Me." Even the company of these three, who understood so little, and the imperfection of whose love He saw so plainly, was a kind of solace. And when even that poor staff broke as he leaned upon it, pain as well as wonder spoke in the gentle remonstrance, " Could ye not watch with Me one hour? " Lonely and hungering for human companionship. He entered into the agony and fought His last fight for us all that we might not fight it alone.