bible and theology on Desolation

Let the soul thank God when she experiences his loving endearments, but let her not repine when she finds herself left in desolation. It is important to lay great stress on this point, because some so...

Lord and God, sometimes we have thought, even said, that you were nowhere to be found, when life’s insecurities, disappointments, and crushing defeat left us empty and full of despair. In our desolati...

Feel your sinfulness. Let it humble you. Let it sober you. Beware of so filling your life with talk shows and phone calls that you don’t regularly stop and consider the ruinous condition of your life ...

Psalm 22:1 was on our Savior’s lips on the cross, and it is in that context a mystery: God forsaken by God! Christians have been trying to unravel this mystery for centuries, without reaching consensu...

Scripture also speaks of “discernment of spirits” and encourages us to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” This aspect of discernment helps us to distinguish the real from the phony, ...

Unimpeded walking is one of life’s most ordinary, least expensive, and deeply rewarding pleasures. With little effort, putting one foot in front of the other and going forward can provide a foretaste ...

Many years ago a great Arctic explorer started on an expedition to the North Pole. After two long years in the lonely northland, he wrote a short message, tied it under the wing of a carrier pigeon, a...

We all go through desert seasons and have the opportunity to determine how we will respond. The cyclical frustrations I faced in regard to my desire for control, fear, and the longing to feel chosen w...

But silence speaks of solitude, and to some persons there is an oppressive sense of sadness wherever human beings are absent. Solitude is so awful to them. . . . Some men flee to solitude through bitt...

Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.

There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within. Moving apprehensively into the desert's emptiness, up the mo...

This is an age where our sense of spiritual possibility, transcendence, and the presence of God has been drained out. What’s left is a spiritual desert, and Christians face the temptation to accept th...

Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.

It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. (Spoken by Galadriel)

“Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. A voice cries: “In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God Every valley shall be lifted up, ...

… I have entered deep waters and the flood sweeps over me. I am exhausted from weeping; I thirst as in a desert. I no longer see the path while Waiting for your return.

Psychologists tell us that one of the most difficult conditions a person can be forced to bear is light deprivation. Darkness, in fact, is often used in military captivity or penal institutions to bre...

In the wilderness, life is stripped of distractions. It is quiet. The topography demands discipline, simplicity, and fierce attention. Solitude in the wilderness makes irrelevant all the people-pleasi...

Silence. All human unhappiness comes from not knowing how to stay quietly in a room.

Eventually, God sends all who truly seek to know him into a spiritual wilderness. That’s why St. John of the Cross calls this dark night, this desert of ours, a “happy night.” The night is happy becau...

In the wilderness, life is stripped of distractions. It is quiet. The topography demands discipline, simplicity, and fierce attention. Solitude in the wilderness makes irrelevant all the people-pleasi...

Dearest Father, we long for light, but dwell in darkness. We crave the warmth of the sun, but crawl into our caverns of sin and sadness. We are a people who prefer the misery and melancholy that we kn...

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.

God uses the desert of the soul—our suffering and difficulties, our pain, our dark nights (call them what you will)—to form us, to make us beautiful souls. He redeems what we might deem our living hel...

The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.

The truth is simpler… and more alarming. [This] is the end of religious experience, the very opposite of mysticism…. We have been going round the paths, and suddenly we see our path goes round a hole,...

A ship went down in a storm, and only one man survived. He was fortunate enough to land on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. With just a few items in his pocket, he was able to build a small...

We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edg...

In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothi...