Articles
The Lord Will Take us Up
The LORD will Take Us Up
Recently, a man in Utah dropped his five year old daughter off outside the door of a university and left her there. It was 5 a.m. and 39 degrees. He told her to shut up and stay there. Scared, cold, and confused, she cried out into the chilled air, “Daddy! Daddy! — Daddy!?” but he never came back. After two and a half hours all alone in the dark, a security guard saw her. Though he was a stranger, when she saw him, she ran towards him in tears, falling and scraping her knee in the process. It was a heartbreaking scene.
Can you relate to this little girl? You may know exactly how she felt, not because your parents dropped you off and left you, but because you were abandoned in other ways. Abandonment in childhood is at the core of so many addictions like porn, drugs, alcoholism, and workaholism. It’s at the core of the incessant need to seek approval from others and to be perfect. It’s at the core of marriage and relationship issues. It’s promotes self-sabotaging behaviors, depression, anger, emotional disconnection, and compulsions of all kinds. We experience abandonment through verbal and physical abuse, lack of emotional connection with our parents, a death in the family, or through divorce. Abandonment destroys our sense of self worth and dooms us to a life of repetitive misery until we’re properly healed.
God knew that. He found you sitting alone in the dark. He found me. “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me up.” (Psalm 27:1). Listen to the way Ezekiel describes how God saved the Israelites from idolatrous parents. “On the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed with water for cleansing…no eye looked with pity on you to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you. Rather you were thrown out into the open field, for you were abhorred on the day you were born. When I passed by you and saw you squirming…I said to you, ‘Live!’. I spread My skirt over you and covered your nakedness. I also swore to you and entered into a covenant with you so that you became Mine, declares the LORD God…Then your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My splendor which I bestowed on you.” (Ezekiel 16:4-14). Admitting we’ve been abandoned isn’t about dishonoring our parents. It’s about admitting our deep seated need for the LORD to take us up. You may have had the greatest parents in the world and they didn’t abandon you in any way. Even so, we’ve all been abandoned by Satan who made us empty promises and dropped us off in the cold. The LORD will take us up. “For He Himself has said, ‘I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.’” (Heb. 13:5a).
