Thriving Alone

“I lie awake; I have become

like a bird alone on a roof.”

~Psalm 102:7 (TNIV).

There may truly never be a better hope for those actually alone than the true Presence of God, though many have never known it or don’t know how to get it right now in their moment of need.

But this state of thriving alone is literally in the resting on the fact. We’re all alone. And it is in this aloneness that we have our answer.

The answer, believe it or not, trips us up because we skate straight over its obviousness.

Alone we were born into the world and alone we will leave it—alone too, we’ll find ourselves many times, even in crowded rooms, and often without the faintest of warnings. Being alone we cannot escape.

And, yet, it overwhelms us only if we’ll run from it.

The Actual Message That Helps

There is a sweet Presence of God in the fact of being alone. There is a place of the heart, by faith, that we can feel never more assured and safe—yes, right there, alone!

This is weird, ironical and paradoxical; hidden it would seem from the nature of humanity. It is found, therefore, in the opposites-of-life, i.e. of the seeking for God, which we’re commonly neglecting.

It’s simple: we knock at the door of heaven and lo and behold, God answers.

But in answering, our loneliness is not suddenly wrenched from us.

God wants us to wallow joyfully in our truth; it’s only in this—our abject lack and dependence on the Spirit—that the Spirit comes to assure us... we are still lonely at one worldly level... our circumstances have not changed... we’re not robbed of the feeling God wants for us—that of loneliness—for God wants us to feel.

There is an importance in our loneliness; it’s not to be rejected or run from.

Again, It’s About Acceptance – Dedication to the Truth

God comes in our acceptance.

God soothes us in our acknowledging of the truth.

God blesses us in our admission that loneliness is not bad; we concur that our loneliness honours good things like the people we miss; our remembrances of our cherished pasts; the unrealised dreams—for dreams are the making of our hopes. Finally, it honours the fact that we’re never ‘fixed’ in this life, or ‘certain,’ emotionally, without the need of God.

I feel something as I write; a wonderful and lovely heart loneliness operant in God. God’s been sought and God’s found presently.

There is such simplistic though rare magic in loneliness. Let us embrace it to thrive through it!

God is there.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.