Loneliness Inside a Crowded Life

NOTHING COMES CLOSE to helping when we are faced with that lonely contemplation in the noisiest of lives, with needs voiced and going begging everywhere it seems. Consciousness of helplessness in the flurry of anxiousness: can there be anything worse? We have nothing to offer ourselves let alone anyone else.

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Chasing a sense of peace – or even a sense of connection,

For, if anything, all that’s on board now is hellish dereliction,

Hoping my way through such a soup – painted into a corner,

Perhaps the only advantage here is to become a faithful mourner.

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Loneliness can occur to anyone at any time, but it saves its poignant blows for the one blindsided by a family crisis, loss, betrayal, unexpected hardship.

We may say to an afflicted one, “Cast all your cares on God, who loves you,” and then we might truthfully realise that such a cliché is not intended through love – it’s a quip, that’s all. How are we to turn something about that leaves us feeling utterly inadequate? Tears help, or do they? Can we control them? Do the floodgates open up and with gargantuan pressure gushing through be stemmed by closing them again mechanically. Do we even have the time to invest in our sadness?

There must be a way we can obtain the therapy we need; from God.

Receiving the Love of Our Need

In all such seasons of mercilessness there is a comfort so paradoxical – so ironical – we scarcely know it ever existed before. This comfort comes welling up from within, as we converse and pray and seethe and cuss and sob. Better always to lament with God than alone; we very well lament with God when we do these things in any event.

God is home in the lamenter. God is there as we connect even within ourselves. As we peek into the mirror, God stares back at us, as we know only a part of ourselves in ‘the one’ looking us in the eye. Grace should afford us a pleasant looking face. God is in us.

When we face the literal crowded room – unable to gain any empathy – we may draw into ourselves, and inwardly also upon God. If we are aware God is all around, the mere thought should soothe.

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God is home in us as we contemplate the lonely reality of being disconnected with people all around. As we connect with the truth of our loneliness, God connects with us inside. There is no better loneliness than a loneliness with the Lord.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.