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By now we are forgotten. Most we once knew have forgotten us, and we have forgotten them. Amidst 7.7 billion bodies, we are strangers, unknown. Amidst our 68 million countrymen, we are nobodies, known only to a few. We barely know our neighbours; only a few faces on our street.

I confess that I have struggled with this reality. Perhaps because I am too egocentric—too self-absorbed. I struggle to come to terms with the great multitudes that walk the earth. Perhaps it would not have been so had I stayed close to home, in the villages and town of childhood, instead of migrating far away for work. But then we all did; everyone I once knew is likewise scattered far and wide.

Yes, and I married into the world, my bride from a land 3000 miles from home. Yes, I married into that world too, to become a stranger ever greater still. Known to a smattering of villagers, in a steep-sided valley with views to the Caucus mountains across the horizon.

Amidst the vast swathes of humanity, we are strangers. Our childhood friends no-longer recall us. Former classmates have forgotten that once we existed. Our friends from university have wandered on with their lives. Former work colleagues, the same. All that remains: our families and a small circle of friends.

And yet, one day, we will be raised alive—all of us together, every human soul of every epoch and nation—to stand before our Lord on a terrifying Day, to be held to account for all we did, by the One who knows each of us intimately, even if there were 150 billion of us. Yes, we will stand before Him on a plain beyond our imagining, amidst the vast ocean of humanity, to face the One who was closer to us than our jugular vein.

We may be forgotten by men, but an accounting with the One who never forgets is drawing near. Oh our Lord, have mercy on us, for verily we have wronged our souls.