Godly Society, Absence of—A Trial to the Christian – Charles Spurgeon

SOMETIMES the child of God endures loneliness arising from the absence of godly society. It may be in early days he mixed much with gracious persons, was able to attend many of their meetings, and to converse in private with the excellent of the earth; but now his lot is cast where he is as a sparrow alone on the housetop. No others in the family think as he does, he enjoys no familiar converse concerning his Lord, and has no one to counsel or console him. He often wishes he could find friends to whom he could open his mind. He would rejoice to see a Christian minister, or an advanced believer; but, like Joseph in Egypt, he is a stranger in a strange land. This is a very great trial to the Christian, an ordeal of the most severe character; even the strong may dread it, and the weak are sorely shaken by it. To such lonely ones our Lord’s words, now before us, are commended, with the prayer that they make may them their own. “I am alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” When Jacob was alone, at Bethel, he laid him down to sleep, and soon was in a region peopled by spirits innumerable, above whom was God himself. That vision made the night at Bethel the least lonely season that Jacob ever spent. Your meditations, oh, solitary ones, as you read the Bible in secret, and your prayers as you draw near to God in your lone room, and your Savior himself in his blessed person, these will be to you the ladder. The words of God’s book made living to you shall be to your mind the angels, and God himself shall have fellowship with you. If you lament your loneliness, cure it by seeking heavenly company. If you have no companions below who are holy, seek all the more to commune with the things which are in Heaven, where Christ sits at the right hand of God.