On the Flip Side

No one wants to be alone. Even if someone is not hunting a significant other, the importance of family on the holidays can’t be refuted. People need community; God knows it and so should we. However, Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything under heaven. Which means, there is a season to be alone.   

One thing forced confinement offers freely is the burden of loneliness. Although there are 300 people in the same metal furnace, you are not kin no matter what glue bonds you. It’s just not the same when significant days come to pass. It isn’t uncommon for silence and withdrawal to accompany the day of your child’s birth, Thanksgiving, Christmas, or an anniversary if you are fortunate enough to keep your marriage vows alive. Sometimes, it requires no special designation other than that of a Tuesday in fall.

This is when I began to look for the flipside. If Ecclesiastes chapter 3 is accurate, then 'alone' has beauty too.

Today, I remembered this lesson well. As I drove from one appointment to the next, I prayed aloud with no other troubles but my own. As tears swelled in the folds of my eyes, I recalled my freedom to join God’s presence whenever and wherever I want. In my unscheduled meeting with Him, my time alone proved to be an incalculable gain. My Lord offered me blessed assurance only moments after admitting my weaknesses.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?... For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8: 35, 38-39