Alone

The word, alone, provokes us...

by Sarah Van Diest @SarahVanDiest

Alone. The compilation of “all” and “one.” All + one. All that there is, is one.

This word provokes us; it makes us feel something because we know this word experientially. All of us have been alone. All of us have been in a crowd and yet felt alone. All have been alone.

Though there are certainly times in our lives when being alone is a wonderful blessing, much of the aloneness fits more with words like: sorrow, dreary, heavy, frightened, and of course lonely.

There is a sad axiom that states every man must face death alone; he is born alone and must die alone. His life is lived with and among others, but the final journey is solitary. I say this is sad and I understand its meaning, but I wonder at its veracity. And I question my own statement, “All of us have been alone.”

At any point in our existence are we ever truly alone? Certainly we have felt lonely and may have no one around us or no one living life with us, but is there a time or place in which “alone” is a wholly accurate description? Is it even possible for us to venture into a situation where we are all there is? I would say no. Never. There is not one instance where our being has experienced life in utter solitude. Though the pain of missed companionship is real, we are never outside the presence of our Sustainer.

I recently read a remarkable autobiography. Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who was a contemporary of Sigmund Freud. I had no real understanding of who Jung was outside of what I had learned in my educational psychology classes, and was quite impressed upon reading his Memories, Dreams and Reflections by his deep spiritual understanding. 

This quote about love may be long, but I believe it is worth reading in whole:

“Here is the greatest and smallest, the remotest and nearest, the highest and lowest, and we cannot discuss one side of it without also discussing the other. No language is adequate to this paradox. Whatever one can say, no words express the whole. To speak of partial aspects is always too much or too little, for only the whole is meaningful. Love ‘bears all things’ and ‘endures all things’ (1 Cor. 13:7). These words say all there is to be said; nothing can be added to them. For we are in the deepest sense the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic ‘love.’ I put the word in quotation marks to indicate that I do not use it in its connotations of desiring, preferring, favoring, wishing, and similar feelings, but as something superior to the individual, a unified and undivided whole. Being a part, man cannot grasp the whole. He is at its mercy. He may assent to it, or rebel against it; but he is always caught up by it and enclosed within it. He is dependent upon it and is sustained by it. Love is his light and his darkness, whose end he cannot see. ‘Love ceases not’—whether he speaks with the ‘tongues of angels,’ or with scientific exactitude traces the life of the cell down to its uttermost source. Man can try to name love, showering upon it all the names at his command, and still he will involve himself in endless self-deceptions. If he possesses a grain of wisdom, he will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown, ignotum per ignotius—that is, by the name of God. That is a confession of his subjection, his imperfection, and his dependence; but at the same time a testimony to his freedom to choose between truth and error.” (emphasis mine)

Sit with these words, my friend, and with the words of life below. Love never leaves us alone.

“Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” John 16:32-33

“Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.” Deut. 31:6

“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” Ps. 23:4

“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

You are held.

You are not alone.

You are loved.

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No matter how we feel, God's word reminds us that He never leaves us alone - @SarahVanDiest (Click to Tweet)

Educated as a teacher, Sarah taught school for nearly 20 years. As a young woman, she lived in China amid the rice paddies and water buffalo near Changsha, and then later taught English in Costa Rica for four years and raised her two sons. 

Sarah is married for the second time, the mother of 2 boys and the step-mother to 3 more. She and her husband, David, work together in their agency The Van Diest Literary Agency. Her full name is Sarah Ruth Gerke Van Diest. She’s 5’5” and cuts her hair when stress overtakes her. 

She is a freelance editor (including a New York Times and USA Today bestseller), blogger (The Write Conversation) and writer for hire. Her first book releases with NavPress in 2018. 

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