Following God doesn't always mean seeing God. In that moment—maybe the moment you are feeling right now—you will be lonely, lost, let down, heart-broken. You’ll also receive an invitation to determine what all that loneliness means. Before you assign meaning, can I just say there might be a difference between being lonely and being alone?
Love invites loneliness. I can't always say why, though I'll attempt to during the rest of this post (during the rest of this life). Love isn't a fix. It's not an ironclad promise about circumstances, context, backstory. There are gaps with love. Words fail me, but with love, there is mystery, pain, wounds; places where it just can't quite show up in fullness. Or maybe better put, perhaps it's us who just can't quite show up in fullness. I don't know, but if love is really love it won't coerce, or force, or control.
Which means love is vulnerable. And when you tap into that. Really tap into that. You'll be susceptible too. How could you not be? Forgiving more, giving money away more, dispensing grace more, giving your life away more, caring more? It may leave you stronger, but only after requiring you to redefine strength, only after requiring you to admit your vulnerability.
I have some longtime friends who just lost their beloved teenage son. An accident. Unforeseen. Without warning, their hearts broken. I've only spoken with them briefly in written messages. She's repeated the phrase a couple of times now, "I can't breathe." I bowed my head reading her note. sigh... yes. She gave everything to be that boy's mom. She gave so much it left her completely and utterly exposed.
What's going on here? sigh... who's to say?
Death is unexplainable. The death of a child even more unexplainable. But, somewhere in the middle of the disarray is love. It's the thing responsible for her vulnerability, but it may be the thing responsible for her healing as well. It seems you can't have one without the other. And my head is still bowed.
Love isn't static. It's dynamic. Thank God because sometimes (often) accidents are too powerful for static propositions, rules, and statements.
Love is change.
Change is risk.
Risk steps further into love.
Nothing is stable. The veneer of control is continually being peeled back by the chaos of chance and timing (BTW, it’s being peeled away by the antagonism of evolution in biology, by the absurdity of super-positioning in quantum physics, by the incompleteness of the incompleteness theory in mathematics too.) Things fold in on themselves again and again. The dimensions can't hold the weight. Everything good is fractal. A prismatic giving away to that which is ever on the inside.
Good Lord, how could "prismatic implosions" not create feelings of loneliness? To enter into the change of life is to be fully human, and fully human means experiencing loneliness. But you are not alone. God is with you.
And since God is love, I'm inclined to say he's lonely too.
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Something happens in the middle of all the inward and fractal loneliness. You either give up and settle. Or… and I'm looking around right now even as I type this to try and find another option, but I know one doesn't exist… or, well, you don't.
And so you question, rail against the machine, rail against god. You realize the god you are railing against may not be the real god. Or maybe it is? (God only knows.) You back up, take another approach, and redefine God. Grunt, sweat, attack, retreat, swing. You reconsider, rethink, rename. Wrestling like Jacob. Maintaining innocence like Job.
Think about that space, maybe the one you're in right now… it seems like you're being invited to do something. What is that something? For you? I don't know. I barely even know what it is for me. But there is an invitation. Caputo says, "The kingdom of God belongs to the sphere of invitation."
I hope you respond.