Loneliness as a blessing;Part Two
Celebrating Gifts Past, Present, and Future.
Loneliness can teach us to appreciate God’s former gifts, gifts current, and gifts future. Recent struggles in loneliness have taught this one such things. A trip to his former home town (Ocala, Fl) solidified a lesson in the abstract the Almighty has been laying out for some time now.
It is easy to long for the past. People, places, and situations can be so easily romanticized. We often, in our minds, look to the past as if we are looking over mountain tops. The peaks are seen with so much ease that it is easy to forget the valleys that contained the shadows of death. It is easy to forget, as you progress in age, that during that time you were wishing for a time further back in history.
Sometime we don’t have to romanticize it. The past may have been very well and good. There may have seemed as if troubles were miles away. Relationships may have been stable, where now they are unstable. Work may have been profitable, whereas now it is scarce and unfruitful. But God is not content to leave us as we are. Comfortable, or perhaps complacent, we are not promised to be.
"We may be content to remain what we call 'ordinary people' but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan. To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice. To submit to it is not conceit or meglomania; it is obedience." -C.S. Lewis
Being around those who have become most precious to this one, I have learned how painful it can be to be away from those who do have such a large portion of the heart. There is nothing but the will of God that stays my feet from returning to them. Paul had these feelings for those whom he loved in the Spirit,
“For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you..” (1)
As a plant designed to grow four-foot tall plant stuck in a two-foot tall greenhouse, we may be warm and touched but unable to become what we ought. We are promised: sanctification, purification, trials, troubles, burdens, and death. When we long for the past we are mourning the present.
A Christian is to long for growth. A Christian is to seek perfection. These things do not come in comfort, but in fire. It is a consistent theme in the Scriptures to compare what God does to make the individual better (And even nations) is comparable to the effects of fire on gold. Refining gold requires a lot of heat that tears the impurities from within the gold to the surface to be scraped off. Christ’s example of a holy life led Him to persecution and death. This is one of the major pitfalls of modern Prosperity Theology. Our hope and source of joy is found in glorifying God which call few to comfort. Paul knew this well,
“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (2)
These things stated that once one moves out of mourning the present, he can begin to truly celebrate the past. Every struggle has been planned for you. If one is a Christian he has declared that he has accepted that Christ’s payment of blood has accomplished reconciliation with God, something man is unable to do. He has dedicated his life to pursuing personal holiness, and a lifestyle and language that glorifies God. God will have glory out of the lives of hermits and monks, but the glory He declares that is from those who love Him is found in the fulfilling the great commission.
One cannot hold onto the past and live to glorify God in the present and seek His glory in the future. You cannot reach the end of the race while sitting and staring in wonder at the blades of grass. Meditation is wonderful. Fond memories are precious and can not only remind us of where we have been, but can allow us to understand where we are going and why it matters. Loneliness is a blessing to those who are able and willing to reckon it to be so. It can be a driving force for the future. Though the present may not be filled with the warm fuzzies of the past, the present is the link from the past to the future. A life lived for the glory of Another cannot be caught up in the past, whether negative or positive. The present may both be a time for sober recollection and examination of the past, and heartfelt appreciation at the same time. Moving into the future does not mean forgetting the past, but honoring it in living the present in order to make the world better for the future.
1) Romans 1: 9-11
2) Philippians 3:7-11
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