Bible Reading: 2 Timothy 4:16-18
"Nick, can you come up here and hold this for me?" Mr. Manning asked.
Nick's heart beat faster as he walked to the front of the classroom. He got nervous any time he had to be in front of others.
With shaking hands, Nick took the poster his teacher asked him to hold. A minute later, he was sitting on the floor with his teacher in front of him.
"Just breathe," Mr. Manning said.
Nick did as he was told and eventually calmed down. When he looked around, he found the classroom empty. "Wait…where did everyone go?"
"They went out to recess," Mr. Manning said. "You can go too."
Nick frowned. Everyone had abandoned him, even his friends.
"Hey, are you okay?" A voice came from behind Nick as he headed for the door.
Nick turned and saw Alex, a kid he barely knew, using his hands to move his wheelchair up to him. "Why aren't you at recess?"
Alex shrugged. "I wanted to make sure you were okay."
"I thought everyone just went out and left me." Nick sighed. "Thanks for caring."
At church that evening, Pastor John talked about the apostle Paul. "In the book of Second Timothy, Paul writes about a time when everyone abandoned him but God," Pastor John said. "Have you ever felt like that? All alone? Sometimes we don't even feel God with us."
Nick thought of how he'd felt at school that day. He had felt completely alone. He hadn't seen Alex in the corner of the room, and he had felt abandoned.
"God is always there," Pastor John said. "Whether we feel His presence or not, He is always with us."
Nick looked at the stained glass window, the one that showed Jesus hanging out with a group of children. Are you always there, God? he wondered. Even when it feels like everyone has abandoned me?
"God never abandons us," Pastor John said, as if reading Nick's thoughts. "Jesus died for our sins and rose again so we would never be separated from Him. Even if everyone else abandons us, God is with us and will help us with every problem we face. He also places caring people in our lives--sometimes ones we don't expect--to remind us we're not alone."
–Emily Acker
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