Being Alone…

Meeting and knowing God is His desire for me.
I often seek to know Him in deep intellectual discussions of Scripture or I ‘hide’ in the loud, hand waving, praise team led, choruses on Sunday morning. But the ‘knowing’ that God desires is not found in knowledge alone, or in corporate ‘praise choruses.’
Am I guilty of receiving knowledge without appreciation, receiving Biblical facts without ecstasy, emotion, eagerness, and exhilaration? Yes, I am guilty, but (as Brenan Manning avers), there is an inevitable time when ‘a moment of truth’ arrives and I am alone…what then?

Plaintively I hear the poet whisper:

Once I stood in the night with my head bowed low
In the darkness as black as the sea
And my heart was afraid and I cried,
Oh Lord, don't hide your face from me.

Hold my hand all the way, every hour, every day
From here to the great unknown
Take my hand, let me stand
Where no one stands alone. (M. Lister)

There, there in my aloneness is the moment of truth…I am alone with Him…
And when the night is bad and nerves are shattered God speaks…God speaks to me through Jesus and tells me the depth of His feelings for me…for me…His love flashes into my soul…pierces the dark corners of fear and doubt…drives out the shadows…and I am over taken by the Mystery that He loves me. He loves me! Not because I am lovable nor in spite of my unloveableness…but He loves me simply because He chooses to and I am His son! That is the saving moment of my existence! Do I dare attempt to escape His love by running into deep intellectual exercises or allow cynicism to ‘bring me back to my senses’? No, a thousand times no, I give myself (once again) to the truth that He loves me as He loves His One and Only! And in that moment, I am ‘found’ and I discover once more that life is worth living!