Alone Time

“My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him.” Psalm 62:5

When I was a kid, I had the run of the neighborhood. I could play with friends at any number of houses. We rode bikes or skated together. The kids also came to my house to play, to color pictures or run through sprinklers. In the summer, I played outside until dark, or until Dad whistled me home. I was encouraged by my parents to be outdoors playing if the sun was shining, which it almost always was because we lived in southern California.

The effect this had on me was that I didn’t play alone very often. I nearly always had a friend to play with. I was as familiar with my friends’ bedrooms as I was with my own. I had a loving home—I just wasn’t in it all that often. I came running if I had a skinned knee, but as soon as the Band-aid was in place, and the requisite kiss had been given, I was off again.

When I married, we had four children, and I continued the trend of rarely having alone time. By then, I craved it. Children have a way of clamoring for attention that left me little brain space for anything creative (besides paper/glue/scissors activities with them) or anything resembling a meditative mind or spiritual insight. When the last child left home and married, I realized I’d been awash in shallow thoughts about God and everything else in life. I began to identify a restlessness about me—a lack of a certain something—that eventually identified itself as the proverbial “hole” in my heart that only God could fill.

I knew God, followed Him, and taught our kids about Him, but I didn’t actually know how to be alone with God, or even to be comfortably alone with myself. I was so accustomed to running to friends when I had a need, I didn’t know how to run to God with it. I had asked friends for advice so often, that it took me a long time to recognize God’s Word as my counselor.

There are seasons in life when God isolates us from the things that used to take all our heart, time, and mind. This may be recovery from an illness or accident, or a removal of “what used to be.” There is a time to walk alone with God, apart from the usual comforts and crutches of life. A time to be trained by Him alone, a time to be amazed with godly awe and wonder at Who He is and what He does. A time for Him to develop independence from all that would try to be a God-substitute. We do need each other, but there is a greater need to lean upon Him alone, and not our neighbor.

Let’s seek times of being separated unto Him.

God, would You order our circumstances so that we learn this dependence upon You alone. Teach us to go daily, gladly, to this school of being isolated unto You. Amen.