The Inevitability of Loneliness
Just to review, I’m (Teresa) exploring this idea that what we have historically thought of as wisdom and maturity and how to acquire it may be...not quite right. I’m suggesting that we rethink what the experience of spiritual growth is versus how we imagined we would feel once we achieve it. As an example, I am picking on loneliness and our notion that it is a bad thing. I’m going so far as to suggest that loneliness may be an inevitable part of growing up. The reason I suggest this is partially because the book of Romans keeps reminding us that our culture gets it wrong and we often go along with its current hypotheses about life without thinking.
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you:
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Romans 12:1-2 The Message
Loneliness has become a cultural bad boy, like gluten or wearing hose (not leggings). In 2017 Theresa May (British prime minister at the time) appointed a “Minister for Sport, Civil Society and Loneliness. Health experts in Germany declared an “epidemic of loneliness” and called for an appointment of a commissioner for loneliness (to eradicate it, not promote it, I presume). Scientists are even working on an anti-loneliness pill to reduce or even eliminate the feeling of loneliness!
I wonder if we have all gotten just a titch off course.
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
Mark 1:35 NIV
