He's Listening! He's Really Listening!

As part of my personal journey during Lent, I went to my bookshelves and pulled down a book I've owned for years but never carefully read. (I have thousands of books that would fall into this category.) The book God led me to is: SEASONS OF PRAYER: Rediscovering Classics Prayers Through the Christian Calendar by Donna Fletcher Crow (Beacon Hill Press, 2000).

Today the chapter I read "The Dark Night of the Soul: Good Friday" resonated deeply. But it is this particular story which Donna tells that so many of us can identify with. Donna is asking her friend, Saundra, who has nine children: What do you do when your baby won't sleep through the night? Saundra's response was:

"I get up with them. You know, you don't really lose that much sleep and sometimes that's the only time I have in the whole day to be alone with that baby and cuddle it. But you can spoil them. I did that with Travis. He was getting me up at 5:30 every morning for a playtime. It was my fault, but he had to suffer for it when it came time that we had to cry it out.

"I lay in the next room listening to him and cried right along with him. But you know, the Lord showed me something really special--Travis didn't know I was in the next room suffering with him, but I was.

“Sometimes I don't know where God is when I have a problem, but He's right in the next room crying with me."

And so must God the Father have cried when His Son was alone on the Cross, abandoned to our sins. But God was faithful.

Easter morning followed Good Friday. Morning sunrise follows the dark of midnight. Springtime flowers burst forth after the coldest winter. God is always faithful. No matter what despair we may experience, we can rely on God's faithfulness (pages 67-68).

And once again God pointed me to His confirmation of this truth in Psalm 22:24-27 New Living Translation):

For he has not ignored the suffering of the needy.
He has not turned and walked away.
He has listened to their cries for help.

The poor will eat and be satisfied.
All who seek the LORD will praise him.
Their hearts will rejoice with everlasting joy.
The whole earth will acknowledge the LORD and return to him.
People from every nation will bow down before him.
For the LORD is king!
He rules all the nations.

“Thank you, Jesus, that you haven’t left us to cry alone. That you do bring deliverance to which we can give public testimony. God, thank you that you come to us in the quiet moments when we are hurting. Because of your compassionate faithfulness, we are assured that you are listening and will come to our rescue."

Running From The Loneliness

No abundance of friends, no number of different marriages, no quantity of moves to new cities can ever take the loneliness away.

"Jesus experienced the loneliness of being misunderstood immediately after giving a series of discourses regarding his identity. He had explained that he was the bread of life, the source of living water, and the light of the world. In addition to all this teaching, Jesus had lived among the people, walked their roads, healed their sick, and fed their hungry. But even after all this, the people still asked him, 'Who are you?'" -- M. Craig Barnes (Sacred Thirst)

"Each of us has a deep-seated need to be significant, unique, connected, and enjoying a powerful relationship with God that is relevant to our everyday life. We have an unquenched hunger to understand and to be understood. ... Loneliness disguised as incompatibility and generated from failing to be understood is the enemy of many marriages. The pain of having no one with similar beliefs, convictions, and choices of recreation leaves both spouses feeling isolated." -- John D. Carlson (Passion for His Presence--Entering His Gates)

Mother Terresa said it well: "Suffering, pain, sorrow, humiliation, feelings of loneliness, are nothing but the kiss of Jesus."

It is our loneliness, our "suffering that so often causes us to see our need. It is our suffering that makes us cry out to God." -- Charles Ringma (Wash the Feet of the World)

"God has not forgotten about our dark nights of restless sorrow. Only when we discover God in the darkest moments of life will we believe that he can and will make the sun finally rise and the new day dawn.

To stand alone in the presence of God is to stand in a place of transformation. There our lonely hearts are reformed and transformed with deep emotions such as joy, love, and compassion for those around us.

It is only in solitude with God that we discover the sufficiency of a God who also yearns for us--so much so that in Jesus Christ he came looking for us.

So instead of running from the loneliness, stay with it. Stare it straight in the eye, and turn it into a prayer of confession. It is the only way to hear the word of the Lord: I HAVE NOT LEFT YOU ALONE." -- M. Craig Barnes (emphasis mine)

Loneliness drives us to aloneness. Aloneness drives us to solitude.

Henri Nouwen reminds us, "Solitude is the way in which we grow into the realization that where we are most alone, we are most loved by God. It is a quality of heart, an inner quality that helps us to accept our aloneness lovingly, as a gift from God."

The Heart can only be satisfied by the One who created it. The yearning is for God.