ALONE

There is a difference to me between being by yourself and feeling alone. One is a choice. It is a matter of privacy and pursuing a need for silence and solitude.

Which is to me something we all need from time to time. There are just ties when life gets too chaotic and we need a sanctuary of serenity to calm our spirit.

On a spiritual level sometimes that is necessary and beneficial for the sake of being able to hear the Lord. We simply get too distracted by all the chaos of life and forget we are more than just flesh and blood.

The normal place one often expects to achieve such closeness with the Lord in the fellowship and worship setting of a church. That can apply, providing you can truly accomplish this frame of mind without any intrusions for the embellishments of religiosity that always seem to bring their own form of clamor.

But since God is not confined to a house of worship, nor times of worship we don't have to just depend upon those times to listen to his voice. Providing we are truly seeking to let him touch us when it his will an not just when we think it should take place.

As for a state of being alone. And I'm speaking of the type of sensation of feeling utterly abandoned and lonely. That can occur anywhere if you have a lack of sense of worth or being. It doesn't matter the location, alone is in reality a view from within.

What the two things have in common is that during the time of being alone, God can often touch us the most. It is when we are in a valley of shadows in our sense of worth. A period, no matter how brief, when we travel the soul searching path to look deeply into our own pool of essence.

And if we are perspective enough and allow our senses to look more than just into our own lives, God can truly speak to us the loudest. Which can be such a blessing in times when we need the most.

How often though it is easy to get lost and consumed by the darkness during the moments of shadows. For if all we hear in that time of silence is the preoccupation of our moans of self-pity, we may miss out on the whispers from the Lord's spirit.

Above all, in the state of alone having God grace us in a special way can truly be the greatest of blessings. For when we are strip of our mask of pretense and truly naked in our vulnerability of thought we can at times have God reveal to us truths we might otherwise never discover.

That can take us from a journey of pity to one of light. To help us rise above the moment and see our part in eternity. It breathes into our lives a new sense of being. A new day of discovery where we walk a new path that can help us to see how life is more than heaviness of feeling utterly alone. And oh what a joy it can be.