Utica Baptist Church, Utica, Mississippi

  Josh Billings called it "a good place to visit, but a poor place to stay." Jean de La Bruyere stated that it was a "great misfortune…to be incapable of solitude." Carl Sandburg figured that we have not cultivated the habit of solitude because we are afraid of being alone:

"Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio, or looked at a TV. They had 'loneliness' and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would mark."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer sensed a certain value of solitude when he wrote, "It is as though in solitude the soul develops senses which we hardly know in everyday life."

It is important to understand that there is a vast difference between being lonely and being alone. It is also important to distinguish between being alone with God in solitude, and merely being alone.

The man or woman of God thrives on the times when he or she can be alone with God, just being still and quiet before Him.

Robert H. Benson once wrote, "It is in silence that God is known, and through mysteries that He declares Himself."

Our idea of solitude today is a few stolen moments while we are driving from one place to another, or five minutes with our feet propped up before the next thing on our schedule. But the Bible does not read, "Run frantically around, and know that I am God." Read it for yourself; it still says, "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10).

But it does not happen automatically. Especially in our day, when there are so many distractions and responsibilities and expectations, we must deliberately carve out time to spend with Him.

--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com

  Several years ago, Yorkshire miner John Thompson set out to build a fish pond in his back yard. He planned it to be three feet by three feet, but he ended up with a hole 17 feet wide and six feet deep. As he began to dig, he discovered that buried right there in that little section of his backyard were twenty bed frames, a washing machine, railroad ties, porcelain ornaments, women's clothes, the skeleton of a dog, and a dead parakeet in a box. Everything but the kitchen sink? No, actually, he found two of them!

There was even a four-door car with 73,000 miles on it. The car still worked (!) but the body fell apart when they tried to pull it out of the hole with a tractor. A neighbor said that the previous owner of the property "liked to dig holes." John Thompson was quoted as saying, "I'm not digging any deeper. God knows what I'd find if I did."

Sadly, that is the attitude many people have about the Word of God. We may have had a little project that caused us to do a little digging in God's Word, at least for a short while, anyway. But then we started pulling out of that rich mine of God's Word things we didn't intend to find! So we stopped digging.

And we say, "The Bible? Well, I don't really understand it. It's too hard to comprehend in places. I don't really like some of what I read there. Some of it is okay, I guess, because it comforts me and gives me strength. But there are places that are just too difficult to understand. Jesus asks us to do some things which are impossible, such as loving our enemies." And on and on we go.

To be honest, sometimes we stop digging in God's Word because we already know what we will find: God's Word will contradict some habit or lifestyle we have chosen, and we will find ourselves under conviction. Take it from someone who has been under conviction many times--it is not a pleasant place to be, and the longer we resist, the more unpleasant it becomes.

Yes, there are some things about God's Word we may never know. Yet we are short-changing ourselves by not living out God's Word in our lives. We are neglecting the important concepts of God's Word that can change our lives to make us more like Christ, to give us more joy and meaning than we've ever thought possible.

So start digging! You won't find the kitchen sink, but you may find something much more valuable--the incredible love of our Savior.

--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com