We can't count on human beings to stay with us, keep us from being lonely. People are always exiting our lives because we leave them or they leave us. Sometimes they - or pets that we love - exit our lives by dying. No one can take our loved ones' place. Even if we're in a group of our dearest friends, if certain people have exited from our lives, there is a deep loneliness in us that no one else there can ease. The older you and I grow, the more empty chairs there are at the family table, the more people there are to miss.
Even going into a surgery or experiencing an illness, I've felt a deep loneliness. The ones whom I love and who love me most cannot crawl into my body or mind, cannot experience what I'm experiencing.
But there is one Person Who never exits from my life or yours. Only one Person promises us that we are never alone. Only one Person is closer to us than we are to ourselves because He makes His abode in the depths of our souls. Because of His unique closeness to us, this Heavenly Father of ours can lead us unerringly when we are lost in fears and loneliness. Only He can ease our loneliness with a comfort that no human being in this world can give us.
"Comfort, give comfort to My people, says your God....Like a shepherd He feeds His flock; in His arms He gathers the lambs, carrying them in His bosom, and leading the ewes with care." (Isaiah 40: 1 and 11.)
God never leaves us because no human being loves us as much as God loves us. So sometimes our Heavenly Father leads us into deserts, wilderness, blizzards, so we are alone. There He can speak to our hearts because in so much silence and solitude we can finally hear Him. God says of us "So I will allure her; (Israel) I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart." (Hosea 2:16.)
Sometimes our desert is our own living room, or study, or bedroom, late at night or early in the morning, when we can sit with Him in the silence and feel His matchless love surround us, fill us, comfort us, and challenge us. In the silence He wipes away our tears. In the silence He helps us to let go of human loneliness and accept His gift of spiritual peace. My God and your God is an ever-present Presence, a hope from out of the blue, a love from beyond me, a faith in me from Someone Else Who knows me and trusts me better than I can know and trust myself.
St. Augustine says "God loves each of us as if there were only one of us" and "Thou hast created us for Thyself, and our heart is not quiet until it rests in Thee."
That's the Mystery of our love relationship with God: He rests in our hearts and we rest in His, in a timeless spiritual embrace we give each other. That eternal embrace begins here and never ends until God Who promises to never leave us orphaned welcomes us home.
Christmas is the Sign above all others that our amazing, wonderful God has chosen to be with ALL of us and EACH of us permanently!!! Today, cuddle the Christ Child in His manger in you - your heart.