In more than one way, Jesus understood what it meant to be alone. He experienced being “alone” when He was not really alone, and He experienced being “alone” when He was completely alone. Consider what we can learn from His “alone time.”
In the first place, Jesus made it a habit in His life to find time to be alone. But, in these times, He was not really alone. In Matthew 14, He tried more than once to depart to a “place by Himself.” Yet, His desire was not to be isolated from everyone. He wanted to be “by Himself to pray” (14:23), to spend time with His Father. We read again in Luke 9 that “He was alone praying” (v. 18). Jesus understood the importance of being alone…but not completely alone. Jesus practiced what He preached—“when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father” (Matt. 6:6).
Yet on another occasion, Jesus experienced complete isolation. “Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘…My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Matt. 27:45-56). God “made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21) when “laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6). At that moment, Jesus experienced a separation (cf. Isa. 59:1-2), an isolation, an aloneness that He had never known.
When it comes to being alone, that is being alone with God, we need all the “alone time” we can get. Jesus purposefully separated Himself from others (even His closest earthly companions) to spend time alone with His Father. When was the last time that we purposefully isolated ourselves from others for the sole purpose of being alone with God?
When it comes to being completely alone, that is being separated even from God because of our sin, we need to avoid at all costs having any “alone time.” Here’s a thought that should help us: Jesus died alone and suffered the devastating separation of sin Himself so that we wouldn’t ever have to be alone!
When our eternal destiny is awarded at the end of time, if you made it your life’s habit to be alone with God here, your reward will be alone time with God forever. But, if you spent your life alone without God, you can expect an eternity of the same. How do you spend your “alone time”?