The Dimensions of Loneliness
The rain poured in torrents from a heavy, gray ominous sky. The last electric transformer in downtown Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic had rumbled to a halt five hours earlier. I stumbled around my apartment searching for each kerosene lamp which hung expectantly on the cold cement walls. Once lit they cast a lonely aura around each room.
In that moment of depression, I looked at the calendar -- it was six days before Christmas. I peered through the falling dusk to find solace -- maybe a warm glowing fireplace, a gallant Prince galloping through the darkness looking for me, or even friendly arms reaching out to give me a hug. I turned and walked away from the window with my hands behind me. I was intensely lonely in a country thousands of miles from my family and a two-hour drive from the other missionary family. And they did not have a phone.
I sat down in front of my sewing machine and continued to sew the girls’ choir skirts for the Christmas pageant, then I remembered a song that the national Christians loved for me to sing for them. Now I sang it to myself, and the flickering kerosene lamps hung silently on the walls:
“No one ever cared for me like Jesus,
There’s no other friend so kind as He.
No one else could take,
The sin and darkness from me;
O how much He cared for me!”
What Brings on Your Deep Pang of Loneliness?
There are many incidences in life that provoke deep pangs of loneliness. For me it was being away from my family in a foreign land at Christmas time. Then there is the widow, who recently buried a life’s companion. The pangs of loneliness are relentless as she eats her dinner in silence, sits in church beside an empty place on the pew, or finds herself in the driver’s seat rather than on the passenger side of the family car. Then there is the wife who is experiencing the pain of a lonely marriage -- a marriage full of rejection, judgmental words, and control.
Webster dictionary says regarding loneliness: solitary, without companions; sad because one lacks friends or companions.
I think that God knew the keenness of the issue of human loneliness. He also knew that no matter if married, single, divorced, temporarily separated from family, on a bed of affliction, wealthy or poor we would experience the emotion of loneliness. In the first books of the Bible, God begins addressing this issue and takes it through to Revelation.
Loneliness Throughout History
In Exodus 33:14, He says: “...my presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” In Isaiah 43:2, God says: When thou passest through the water, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.”
John 14:18 says: “I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.” The writer of Hebrews repeats: “...I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”
Timothy was lonely when he said: “At first no man stood with me, but all men forsook me:...”. Jesus was lonely when he said, “Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.”
I have a feeling that Jesus was speaking by faith here when He said, “...and yet I am not alone...” because one of the pains of the cross was that He felt that God had forsaken him. He knew it was all in the Divine plan, but that knowledge did not lessen the pain.
God gives us reasons to long for His presence during the painful hours of loneliness. He is giving us the opportunity to know Him as our Friend. Marriage is not the solution to a lonely single life nor divorce for a lonely marriage. Only as we understand that loneliness is a normal human emotion that God designed to bring us into intimacy with Him, will we be able to step into the future, whatever it holds because we have already experienced intimacy with Christ.
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