PERHAPS we have all felt that to be alone with God means to be apart from human habitation and association,—in the wilderness, in the primeval forest, on a wide expanse of waters, and that perchance in some such remote spot we might become conscious of a separateness from worldly thought, and a oneness with God, impossible in the crowded haunts of every-day life, surrounded by our fellow mortals.
A deeper insight, however, into the things of Spirit, which also includes a keener analysis of human thought and motive, and the claims of error, reveals more than this isolation of body or person as a pre-requisite to true aloneness, or communion with God. Nothing can separate us from God save our own false beliefs concerning Him (and this only in belief), and these errors may be quite as alert and active, quite as aggressive in the desert as in the marketplace or any of the gatherings of men.
It is difficult sometimes to know this, or at least to acknowledge it, for under stress of circumstances, in the midst of sore travail of soul, the heart cries out for solitariness, thinking that there it may find God and rejoice in conscious aloneness with Him. But this longing may never be realized, and perhaps it is well. Selflessness lays even its most cherished desires on the altar, and seeks its own in another's good.
