I Will Never Leave You

I Will Never Leave You

Viktor Frankl survived three Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau. He lost almost everyone he loved. He wrote: 'Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.' What Frankl called the last freedom, a Christian might call the experience of Emmanuel — God with us, even in the camp, even in the darkest place. Several of his fellow prisoners were sustained by an interior certainty of divine presence that Frankl, a Jew by background but not Orthodox in belief, called 'remarkable.' Their peace was not explained by circumstances. It was explained by presence.

Hebrews 13:5 draws from Deuteronomy 31:6, where God speaks these words to Israel about entering a land full of enemies. The Greek construction in Hebrews is emphatic — the double negative that is not available in English: 'I will never, under any circumstances, leave you; I will never, ever, forsake you.' This is the most categorical promise in Scripture. It does not say 'I will be with you when you deserve it' or 'as long as you remain faithful.' It is unconditional. Whatever has happened, whatever you face, whatever the darkness of the present moment — He has not left. He will not leave. The promise is not a feeling; it is a fact. Choose today to act from the fact rather than the feeling.