Hope Beyond Experienced Aloneness

Some frustrating days, at the end of them, have us verging on contemplations, dark and sinister. We seriously wonder how life could be worse or how it could get better. Forlornly, we realise we have nothing but God. Seriously, we hate it. We hate being so bereft of joy that we have no choice but to accept our aloneness. When there is nothing left there is only God, but God is always enough.

When there are no trinkets to comfort us all we have is the Spirit, but the Spirit is always enough.

God’s Comfort In Our Aloneness

Whilst we hate going to God when there is nothing left in the world for us, there can be only one thing that can help us in this state of need.

As we range from the burden of overload to the emptiness in feeling alone we are neither satisfied nor validated. Nothing of those experiences quite matches our expectations for life. We have come to expect more from life, though strangely it hasn’t been God who has sown those thoughts.

And as we resolve, afresh perhaps, that we have put our cart before the horse we begin to notice what, or more so, who, we have left out of our lives.

A strange reality burgeons upon our belief: in the starkness of this loneliness, a contemptible state, we are never closer to grasping God. We are never closer to the Presence. We are never closer to the comfort that only God can provide. But it took for us to become alone, separate from all the world, and all that the world could offer us, to come close. And we may be still so far away if our hearts are not open to prayer.

The Holy Matter Of Prayer When Alone

Our aloneness brought us to this place of sanctification before God, by pure position in being so close. But just as much we run ever harder back to the world. Just as much we resent the fact of our aloneness. Just as much we miss the point.

The point of our aloneness is where it is pointing us. When we have nothing else to distract us we are perfectly positioned to receive God. When we go in to Divine Presence by our prayer, being richly ever so ourselves, and brutally honest, we communicate, if not by words, by thoughts.

But just as important as our prayer is our receiving of God. This is not a complex process but it is elusive. Why would we pray, if, in doing so, we cut ourselves off from God? By praying selfish prayers of want we do so. But the authentic prayer of declaring feelings and being honest, pouring out our hearts, is a blessed prayer redeeming holy Presence. There is a subtle difference separating these prayers.

Being totally alone invites the Presence of God. Then we need to put ourselves in the position of receiving God. When we communicate the deepest of our feelings, sometimes those that are unutterable, we stand to receive what we need—the experience of peace despite our circumstances.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.