SOLITUDE & COVID

SOLITUDE & COVID

Solitude is time alone away from the company of other people. As humans we love being together with other people because we are social beings. We enjoy being busy, working with and doing things for other people. We tend to avoid solitude and become restless, ‘lost’ and disorientated when we are away from people.

However, solitude is not something we need avoid – but something we can embrace. The social dimension of life has to be balanced with time alone, time of withdrawal and time of inactivity. This is the essence of sabbath. Unless social life is balanced with solitude we lose perspective. Why am I working? Am I doing the things that really matter for myself and others? Am I doing the things that God has made me for? Am I doing the works He has given me to do?

For the believer solitude is a great gift. It is an essential component of prayer. In solitude we come away from the echo chamber of the noise of the world and the echo chamber of religious talk and group think. There, in the place of solitude and withdrawal, we can calm down, slow down and settle down. The voice of God becomes clearer. We begin to receive rest and reset.
“Come to me all you who are heavy laden and and I will give you rest.”

In solitude we respond the call of God ”Come away my beloved”. We nurture the love relationship with Our Loving Heavenly Father from which our life and meaning flows. We separate ourselves from the pressure of our work and align ourselves afresh with the work that He give us to do.

How many marriages have been destroyed because work was placed ahead relationship? In solitude relationship is restored to its right place and work is placed in perspective. Christianity itself needs time apart from its own agendas. The busyness of religious programs can become more and more frenetic. Unless we stop occasionally we will simply become ‘cogs’ in a great religious machine of our own making that becomes bigger and bigger, faster and faster. It can actually choke our relationship with God because it becomes a substitute for it rather than a facilitator of our relationship.

Times of slowing down help us to reset. It is a healthy thing to come before God and ask Him to blow away the unnecessary and direct us to be truly led by His Spirit rather than the pressure of events or of religious machines of our own making,

Jesus loved to be with people, with his friends, with his apprentices (disciples) and with needy people. This is the essence of Christian community. However the busyness of His life with others was counterbalanced by time alone – in solitude with His thoughts and with His Father.

The present social isolation caused by the Covid 19 crisis is a huge disruption of our lives but it can also become a gift to us as we embrace this gift of solitude. We don’t stay in solitude forever. We can come out of this place with new direction and strength. This new direction may be to do something completely new or to do exactly the same things as before but with a new reliance on God’s strength and greater love, kindness and enthusiasm.

“Those who wait upon he Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount with wings like eagles – they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and shall not faint.“