From Loneliness To Love

"Loneliness is a condition of human life, an experience of being human which enables the individual to sustain, extend, and deepen his humanity. Man is ultimately and forever lonely whether his loneliness is the exquisite pain of the individual living in isolation or illness, the sense of absence caused by a loved one's death, or the piercing joy experienced in triumphant creation. I believe it is necessary for every person to recognize his loneliness, to become intensely aware that, ultimately, in every fibre of his being, man is alone - terribly, utterly alone" - Clark Moustakas (Loneliness, p. ix)

I must agree with this statement. All but the last sentence, anyway. We are alone. Though we may share our hearts and our very lives with another, or several others, at the end of the day, we are left alone to ourselves. I'm sure all of us have experienced the feeling of being 'lost in a crowd.' The sense of being alone, even though you're in a room filled with other people. Could it be that all these other people are feeling the same loneliness? I believe so. We are created to need companionship, in one form or another. Genesis 2:18 says: The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." We weren't made to be alone, or to be lonely. God created us for community. When we struggle with the lack of community, it leaves a deep void in our inner man. We may try to fill this void with other things, or even with other people. That's not to say that these are bad things. But nothing can perfectly fill the void in our hearts like the love of God, through our relationship with Jesus. Nothing else can even compare to this great love. Left to our own devices, we are doomed to a life of searching for something greater. Always seeking, never finding what satisfies. God loves family. He loves relationship. He is a very personal, one-on-one being, and we are created in His image. This may sound paradoxical given that His love is also broad enough to fill the void simultaneously in every other person in the earth. But that is who God is. He doesn't have to play by our rules. We don't have to understand Him to make Him a reality. In fact, if we could understand Him, there would be no reason for us to follow Him; no reason for us to need Him. Once we get to the point of figuring something out, it becomes limited. We unlock all its mysteries. We become bigger than it, in a sense. Its value lessens due to the fact that we have have reduced it to something so easily contained within the confines of our limited intelligence. There is no respect for something of this nature. Thank God He is bigger than that! He is uncontainable, uncontrollable, undeniable, unimaginable. We believe, in our limitation, that we can define God, the Creator and definer of everything in existence. God is unlimited, and we are very limited, even incapable of realizing just how limited we are. Psalm 139 illustrates this particularly well, along with the immeasurable love that God has toward each one of us.


Romans 11:34 For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became his counselor?
1 Corinthians 2:16 For who has known the mind of the Lord? But we have the mind of Christ.

If you've spent more than five minutes with me, in conversation, or in reading my words, you have noticed that I sometimes ramble on endless tangents. That being said, What does any of this have to do with being lonely? Well, to sum it all up, based on what I have already written, we are not meant to be lonely. But we all have felt this way. Some of us may be feeling this right now. Elijah felt this way immediately following one of his strongest spiritual victories. We are all vulnerable to loneliness. To some of us, it is a very real, very constant companion. What a terrible thing, only to be comforted by your own loneliness. God has Himself felt this loneliness; that's the reason He created us. So He would have someone to love, and someone who would willingly love Him in return. We love Him because He first loved us. But loneliness, as I mentioned, is very real. It is in these times that we grow weak; in these times that we must rely on God even more than usual. God will never leave us lonely. He will be our constant Comforter, Companion, and best Friend. But we must let Him be these things in our lives. He will not force Himself upon us. He will not make us love Him. He wants us to come to Him in ourselves. In our desperation. In our loneliness. He will be our comfort and our strength. He loves us immeasurably. Let us allow Him to fill that void in our hearts, as only He can. We were made with an innate need to be loved, to be part of someone, something greater than ourselves. Greater than anything this world can offer. We were not made to be lonely. We were made to be loved.