Feelings have become shared possession in time of crisis

Yet now, it feels like every one of my feelings is a shared possession. Even dog owners walk by and say hello as a sign of togetherness and shared experience, and I don’t even have a dog.

It’s true being cooped up in a small flat with no garden can feel so isolated and exacerbate mental illness, but it’s also true that when isolation becomes the front page topic of every news broadcast, people feel less isolated and more unified than they have ever felt, and therefore, more mentally stable.

Isolation, depression and acute anxiety bite the hardest when no-one sees, no-one knows and no-one cares.

Right now people care!

We are sharing a feeling that only happens in golden years like 1966 and dark seasons when national tragedy strikes.

The truth is, however, that we’ve been sharing common experiences since we entered puberty.

Our feelings of alienation, abandonment, rejection and shame when we felt like we were ‘the only ones’,

are actually universal experiences shared by absolutely everyone.

It’s just that it never looks that way, until a crisis removes the mirage of ‘cool’ from people’s lives.

I know that there are degrees of pain and degrees of anguish but every pain when I’ve felt like I’m the only one going through this and no one understands, is simply not true.

We are all fragile. We are all fully human - even Simon Cowell.

We are all susceptible to the dread of rejection. We are all filtering our world with the question ‘am I accepted’.

It’s even created the fashion industry that gives us an ever changing uniform of acceptability, even if it doesn’t really suit our body shape at all.

The other two unanswered questions that we constantly ask ourselves are ‘am I in control’ and ‘am I enough’.

Our humanity hates the feeling of free fall and shuns the feeling of being in lack.

When the New Testament talks about Jesus and states ‘for we do not have a high priest who is

unable to empathise with our weaknesses’, it is possible that this could actually be a true statement.

Jesus experienced pain, suffering, heartbreak and sorrow not just more than us all, but also on behalf

of us all.

‘He knows’ is at the backbone of the entire Gospel story.

It then goes on and offers a deal that many have found it hard to refuse - ‘let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need’.

Everything begins with a little understanding.

Dave Gilpin is one of the longest serving Pastors in Sheffield. He leads Hope City Church that now

holds their inspirational services online from 10AM on Sundays. The link to it is

online.hopecity.church.