Your anguish is known in the courts of heaven, and the tears that wet your pillow this birthday are seen by Him who once wept at a grave and sweat great drops of blood in a garden alone. Cease dreaming that you have sinned beyond grace; that is a lie forged in the pit. You have no hope in yourself, well did you say it, but there is hope for you in Him whom God has provided to be the Savior of such as you! When you feel invisible and forgotten, remember that your Lord was left alone just when, as Man, He most needed human sympathy. He entered the deeps of friendlessness that He might be a faithful High Priest to souls adrift in the same dark sea. His loneliness has an awfulness of love in it: He sank into that abyss to fetch you out.
You plead for a man from a far country to send you back to treatment, to give you a home. Yet I must point you higher, to the Man from a far country who came down from the right hand of the Father, trailing clouds of glory, to rescue you from a far worse sickbed, the palsy of sin and the fever of a condemned conscience. He is the Divine Miracle Worker. He spoke to the demoniac among the tombs when no chain could hold him, and with a word stilled the legion. He can drive out the black thoughts that whisper “You are forgotten,” for He has power over the firmly entrenched enemy of despair. The miracle of your soul’s deliverance does not lie in you, nor in any human friend, however kind. It lies wholly in Jesus Himself. Consider the miracle of the loaves: none of that desperate multitude refused the Lord’s provision, else it had been a poor, lame business. So it is now. Jesus Christ a Savior and no sinner saved? Christ a Physician and no sick healed? He never passes by a soul that brings its emptiness to Him. Today, on the day of your birth, He stands ready to make you a mass of miracles, a miracle of new life. The first miracle Christ worked was not in a temple but before a man bound by an unclean spirit, and that man’s deliverance came by Christ’s sovereign word alone. Still He speaks, and the captives spring free.
Examine the great birthday we read of in the Gospel: when Christ was born an angel announced joy for all people, for unto you was born a Savior. Here is the intimate mingling of the divine and human. He is bone of your bone, yet mighty to save from death and hell. Let your hope fix here. You cry, “Send someone to hold my hand, to tell me I matter.” Yet there is one who has graven you upon the palms of His hands; those scars are the eternal proof you are not forgotten. He can send a kind heart to your bedside, pray for that mercy, but do not wait for a creature’s touch before you trust the Creator. The connecting link between His divine power and your need is faith. Faith in the young beginner is often cast down, but even a grain of it can say to this mountain of despair, “Be removed.” You have given up all hope? He sees you! That is your ray of light. The woman bowed down for eighteen years could not lift her eyes to Christ, but He saw her and called her, and made her straight, and she glorified God. This is your day of miracle if you will look away from the devices of your own weary heart and hear His call: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden.” You have not one reason to hope in yourself, but you have ten thousand reasons to hope in Him.
I do not dismiss your earthly loneliness as a small thing. Christ Himself shared it, and the faithful often taste it. But know this: His grace is grand in emergencies. In your own life story, trace back the deliverances you have already known, and consider the miracle of the loaves as it has transpired for your soul. If He has kept you from the grave, even by a hair’s breadth, He has done so that you might sing in the land of the living. You have tasted the cold cup of despair; now let Him fill it with the new wine of His love. You are tired of being brave? Good. Cease your own struggling. As well hope to vanquish Leviathan with a straw as to drive out despair with mere resolve. He is the rescuer. He takes the prey from the mighty. Your sins, though they manacle you, are not stronger than His pierced hand. He can do it more swiftly than I can speak of it: in this very hour, while you read, He can whisper peace. Hope against hope, as Abraham did, considering not the deadness of your own heart but the promise of a faithful God. You asked, “Did I do something wrong?” All have sinned, but the question is answered at Calvary. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, yours included.
Therefore, let this birthday be the great birthday of your new birth. The world’s candles gutter out, but the Light of the World never fails. Prayer becomes mighty when we have ceased to trust our own arms. Go now, with your tears still wet, and cast your soul upon Him. He is calling you, doubter, desponding one. Will you not trust Him? If you do, you will yet say, “He brought me up out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock. He has put a new song in my mouth.” May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
