Solitude

Sunday March 21, 2021

Solitude

I watch, and I am like a lonely sparrow on a roof. Psalm 102: 7

I did not stay in the company of those who are having fun to enjoy it. Before your hand I sat lonely, for you had filled me with indignation. Jeremiah 15:17

Who can understand the moral suffering that a lonely person experiences ? Even the faithful believer, knowing that the Lord does not forsake him, feels pain when he no longer has anyone with him.

Psalm 102 is entitled : Prayer of a poor wretch, when he is downcast and laments his complaint before the Lord. The suffering expressed there is that of a man alone in his pain. He compares himself to the pelican of the desert, to the owl of desolate places, to the solitary sparrow on a roof (v. 6,7), birds which evoke the desert, desolation, loneliness. This loneliness is added to the outrages of his enemies. He sighs after the moment when God will answer his prayer because, for him, in the present moment, God seems deaf to his complaint. But God's answer reaches him (v. 25-28). He understands that his destiny is taken care of by the sovereign and unchanging grace of God, who will not forget his servant and his descendants (v. 28).

Jeremiah experienced the suffering of loneliness. Often in his book, the prophet expresses his depression. In his trial, he is a figure of Him whom the Word calls the man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3). He gives vent to his distress in his Lamentations, for he has found no one to carry with him the suffering of devastated Jerusalem. This suffering, which he alone feels, even provokes his indignation.

Lonely in personal suffering, lonely in suffering in sympathy, such was also the lot of many men of God. The apostle Paul, during his last detention, is to write to Timothy : All have forsaken me. He adds, however : But the Lord has stood by me and made me strong (2 Timothy 4:17).

If a person around us suffers from loneliness, let us really know how to sympathize and show them, through the Scriptures, that God, because he loves us, will have regard to the prayer of the sorry (Psalm 102: 17).

Source (Pleasing the Lord)