# Solitude and Loneliness



## JM (Dec 11, 2008)

The disciples of Christ, like their Lord and Master, often feel themselves alone. The season of sickness—the hour of bereavement—the period of trial, is often the occasion of increased depression from the painful consciousness of the solitude and loneliness in which it is borne. The heavenly way we travel is more or less a lonely way. We have, at most, but few companions. It is a “little flock,” and only here and there we meet a traveller, who, like ourselves, is journeying towards the Zion of God. As the way is narrow, trying and humiliating to flesh, but few, under the drawings of the Spirit, find it. *If, indeed, true religion* consisted in mere profession, then there were many for Christ. If the marks of discipleship were merely an orthodox creed—excited feeling—denominational zeal—flaming partisanship, then there are many that “find the way.” _But if the true travellers are men of broken heart—poor in spirit—who mourn for sin—who know the music of the Shepherd’s voice—who follow the Lamb—who delight in the throne of grace—and who love the place of the cross, then there are but ‘few’ with whom the true saints journey to heaven in fellowship and communion._

But the path is even narrower than this—the circle is smaller still. How few real companions do we meet even amongst the saints of God! Loving them as we do, and yearning for a wider fellowship, yet how few there are with whom we can walk side by side! Doctrine divides us from some. If we speak of God’s eternal love, and free choice, and discriminating mercy, we offend. “When our Lord preached the doctrine of sovereign grace, we read that “from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” O it is a solemn and affecting thought, that even the very doctrines of Christ’s gospel build a wall of partition between his true disciples. Church government and ordinances sunder others. The blemishes and imperfections still clinging to the saints, such indeed as separated Paul and Barnabas, often interrupt the full harmony of Christian communion. The difference of spirituality, too, which we find in the Lord’s people, tends to abate much of that communion which ought to distinguish the one family of God. “We meet, perhaps, with but few who have been taught precisely in our school, who see truth as we see it, and who observe ordinances as we observe them, or who can understand the intricacies of Christian experience through which, with toil and difficulty, we are threading our way. Few keep the same pace in the Christian race with us. Some linger behind, while others outrun us. There is one always so lost in a sense of his unworthiness as never to enter into our joy; and there is another towering, as on the eagle’s wing, and soaring into a region whose very purity awes, and whose effulgence dazzles us. Thus are we learning the solitariness of the way, even in the very church and family of God within which we are embosomed.

[latter]

Let the season of temporary solitude be a time of earnest prayer—

of deep searching of heart—

of much honest, close, filial transaction with yourself and with God. He may have allured you into the wilderness, he may thus have set you apart from all others for this very end. You have been communing much with books, and with men, he would now have you commune with your own heart and with himself. And this, too, may be the school in which he is about to train you for greater responsibility, for more extended usefulness, and for higher honors in his church. Moses was withdrawn from Pharaoh’s court and banished to the solitude of the wilderness forty years, in order to train him to be the great legislator and leader of God’s people. Who can tell what numerous blessings are about to be realized by you, and through you, by the church of God, from the present season of silence and repose through which you are passing? O to feel a perfect satisfaction, yea, an ecstatic delight, with all that our heavenly Father does. Submission is sweet, resignation is sweeter, but joyous satisfaction with the whole of God’s conduct is sweeter still. “My Father, not my will but thine be done.” Be this, then, your solace—this your boast—this your midnight harmony—

“I AM NOT ALONE, BECAUSE MY FATHER IS WITH ME.”

http://www.shilohonline.org/


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