The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.

Zephaniah 3:17

 

A long time ago, as I was reading Traveling Light by Max Lucado, I noted how he said that “loneliness is the absence of intimacy.” He went on to say how loneliness could be looked on as a gift from God. When we’re lonely and have no one close who we can be honest and intimate with, we would be forced to go to God. He’d be the only one left to go to.

But I so disagree with him and I feel it was a somewhat insensitive thing to say. So many of us living with depression have a hard time going to God when we’re in the depths.

I very much need people with skin on too. A person I can have a coffee with. A person who will respond to what I have to say. I need more than God alone. I need the love of people who represent Him. I need a regular “fix” of people like this. The best are from my church family – people I worship with, people who are spiritually on the same page as me, people who will support me and who I, in turn, can give support to.

Often when depression threatens, and especially when it has taken hold, I can be very lonely. God seems further away and I really do need to be reminded I’m loved. Then I find that God does love through people. People can – and have been – God’s hands for me. I don’t think loneliness is a gift as Lucado claimed.

It’s not so bad to need your friends but we shouldn’t start relying on them. In the end, God is the only one we can truly rely on. People will at times let us down. Our friends are needy as well at times. They can’t always be there for us.

But although God seems distant at times, He is there for us, nevertheless. In fact, He longs for us to reach out to Him. Yes, he wants to have us close to Him as well.

marja