Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Loneliness of Holiness

What a breath of fresh air it is when one's life experience is validated in the lives and words of the saints of old, who themselves know the different nuances of what it means to walk upon the narrow path of devotion and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

"The truly spiritual man is indeed something of an oddity. He lives not for himself but to promote the interests of Another. He seeks to persuade people to give all to his Lord and asks no portion or share for himself. He delights not to be honored but to see his Savior glorified in the eyes of men. His joy is to see his Lord promoted and himself neglcted. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces (see Psalm 45:8), and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. 'Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me' (Psalm 27:10). His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else. He learns in inner solitude what he could not have learned in the crowd—that Christ is All in all, that He is made unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption, that in Him we have and possess life's summum bonum.
"


- A.W. Tozer, The Radical Cross, ch. 6, p. 37

6 comments:

  1. Such great words! The yearning for Christ within me almost seems like something I can't attain or grasp; it's such a strange dichotomy to long for Christ and yet live in this body of weakness.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, to be able to stay in touch practically moment by moment with the fact that Christ is All in all...

    ReplyDelete
  3. One day we shall never be lonely any longer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I would like to know you more brother. What is in that first paragraph that you would expound?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sir,

    I really haven't found the person who shares my passion for theology, who shares in the same weaknesses, who seeks Christlikeness above personal promotion and gain—basically, I am perhaps looking for a fellow sojourner who is pretty much close to who I am.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails