Company in Loneliness
God present in the place that feels empty.
Loneliness is not always being by yourself. It can be sharpest in a full room, in a group chat that moves along without you, at the end of a day when nobody asked how it went. After a while you start to suspect that the problem is you.
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.
Genesis 28:16
Jacob was travelling away from home and stopped for the night in an ordinary place because the sun had set. He took a stone from the ground, put it under his head, and lay down to sleep (Genesis 28:11). When he woke, he did not say that God had just arrived. He said God had been there the whole time and he had not known it.
That gap between what is real and what we can feel is worth holding when you are alone. Jacob’s loneliness was not imaginary, and the verse does not erase it. He still woke in an empty place with a stone under his head. What changed was what he now knew about the place. Feeling unseen is not proof of being unseen.
Today, do the small thing loneliness argues against: send one message to one person, asking about them instead of reporting on yourself. First look around the room and say quietly, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.”
Feeling unseen is not proof that I am unseen.
Genesis 28:16