Why Loneliness Can Bring You Closer to God

REJECTION has its advantages.

It has been known to inspire motivation, when we can say, “Well, you just wait and see; I will show you!” I can recall myself attending to issues of rejection like that as far back as when I was a teenager. Indeed, there is a great thing to be said for aloneness that is staged in an “I don’t need you, world” type of attitude. It has been known to inspire very many people.

Now if we morph the abovementioned desire to connect with ourselves we can also entreat God. As we bring thought of the Divine into the very chasm of our brutal loneliness, we establish space to traverse from self-pity to God-pity — the empathy of the Lord, not for the situation we find ourselves in, but just simply for how we feel.

If we imagine God being the Lord of our Presence — because he is — then we have learned in one foul swoop to experience the true God.

It might well be said that loneliness is the surest path to intimacy with God. Sure, there is grief, which will take us into the lap of God’s empathy for what we are feeling. But loneliness, as much, we take us directly into the heart of God.

It might well also be said that a withdrawing from the world, into one’s own silence — a contemplative must every now and then — and to go there with God — is an essential spiritual activity in the restoration of our soul. How are we restored within the wiles of busyness and confusion otherwise?

Clarity is learned in loneliness. How we really feel is experienced in loneliness. Truth is known in loneliness. Our true friends are revealed in loneliness. And God is there with us in our loneliness, if we take him there with us!

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God chooses to be close to the lonely, and the lonely are close to God if they choose.

There is no rhyme nor reason that God would have it otherwise. Instead of self-destructing in our loneliness, and destructing over others, we have a wise choice to make in our loneliness. If we draw near to God, he will draw near to us (James 4:8).

Lonely and cold,

No longer brave and bold,

Who’ll be our friend?

Right with us til the end?

This Lord of our Presence,

Who is known in our essence,

Our Lord of encouraging love,

Our Lord, here, and above.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.