Some of the loneliest people are surrounded by others, yet they feel that no one understands them.—That is, the real person that they are. They long for someone to share their interests and problems, to sympathize with them. But it’s true that even your lifelong companion, your closest friend, does not really know you, does not really understand you after all, because in every life there’s a locked door or two where no one enters but yourself.
Why do we have this deep craving to be understood? Why is there this intense longing to have someone enter into what we feel of joys and triumphs, sorrows and defeats? When reality is that when we climb the heights of exaltation, there is no one who can fully enter into our emotions, and in the depths of sorrow, some tears are always shed alone. Why is that?
God made you for Himself, and He knew that this very sense of isolation, of not being understood, would drive you to Him. God Himself is the answer, the fulfillment. And only as He Himself fills that longing will you ever be satisfied. He made you that way, He made you for Himself, and not until He fills your life will you ever be free from that loneliness. He’s put a little sign on the table of your heart, which reads, “Reserved for Me.” He knows that when we find human sympathy so lacking, we seek for the divine.
God is big enough, great enough to fill any soul, and His is complete companionship, ideal and perfect friendship. This lack we all sometimes feel, this incompleteness, is a need for God. He who made us is the only One who can fill every part of our life. There’s no need to ever be lonely. Jesus said, “I will never leave you, nor forsake you, for lo, I am with you always.” 1 Let Him come into your lonely heart and take over, and then you can say, as Jesus said, “I am not alone because the Father is with me.” 2