Saturday, November 7Community
Woe to Him That Is Alone
Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
DevotionalSaturday, November 7
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Lord, I would rather fall where nobody can see it. I have built a life where I am useful to everybody and known by almost no one. I call it strength. You know what it really is.
These verses get read at weddings. Back up one verse and they stop sounding like a wedding. The Preacher is watching a man who works without rest. He has neither child nor brother, “yet is there no end of all his labour,” and he never stops long enough to ask, “For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good?” Then comes the line about two being better than one. It was a warning to the solitary achiever long before anyone raised a glass to it.
Some of us are that man with a better calendar. Admired and alone. We tell ourselves nobody understands what we carry. Underneath that is something less noble: being helped means being seen, and being seen means somebody finds out. So we hide the fall. And hiding feeds the very thing we are hiding. Shame tells you to go quiet. The quiet gives sin a private room, and sin pays you back in more shame. The loop keeps running in the dark because we keep the lights off.
Look at Jesus in Gethsemane. The Son of God, without sin, turns to three tired fishermen and says, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me” (Matthew 26:38). He asked for company. If he would not carry that night alone, what makes you think you were built to?
They slept. Then they ran. He went to the cross more alone than anyone has ever been, and a stranger coming in from the country, Simon of Cyrene, was pulled off the road to bear the beam (Mark 15:21). Jesus took the woe of the one who falls with no one to lift him. He took it so that, risen, he could make strangers into a body. Joined to him, you are joined to them. What you call self-reliance is a refusal of what he died to give you.
It reaches past your own heart, too. Picture a man walking out a gate with his belongings in a plastic bag and nobody waiting in the lot. A system can sentence a person to aloneness long after the sentence ends. The church is supposed to be the car idling in that lot. We will never be that for anyone while we refuse to let anyone be that for us.
Let somebody see you fall. Then stay at the table long enough to lift someone else.
Pray
Father, I confess I have kept people at arm's length and called it strength. I let friends see my wins and I hide my falls. I have nursed sin in private because I was more afraid of being known than of staying the same. Forgive me. Jesus, you asked your friends to watch with you, and you let a stranger carry your cross. Give me that kind of humility. Thank you for bearing the woe of the one who falls alone, so that I never have to. Bring me one honest friend today, and make me that friend for someone else. Amen.
Practice
Before tonight, tell one safe, wise person a true thing you have been hiding, or ask them to pray for something specific and uncomfortable. Then think of one person in your life who has nobody waiting in the parking lot, and show up for them this week.
Carry
Being seen is the price of being lifted.