What then of aloneness? For being alone is the illusion man wears until the scales are removed from his eyes.
THE HEART OF AN ORPHAN
Almost every person I know has been afraid of the dark at one time or the other. And to coin a phrase, I would hazard a well-considered stab in the dark that almost everyone alive has also been afraid of the dark at least one time in their lives. Fear of the dark, then, is clearly not an isolated condition. Instead, it’s one which at differing individual milestones holds the very heart of each person equally captive. Given its widespread pervasiveness, it would behoove us to perhaps then ask, “WHY”?
Is it because we are intuitively and acutely mindful that our connection to others, by proxy of our senses, becomes measurably diminished or severed “in the dark”? And that in this condition of sensory isolation, we have a heightened awareness of somehow “being alone”? And, therefore, by conclusion, we feel at our most vulnerable too? By inference then, could it also be possible that until we are no longer afraid of being alone, that we will probably continue to remain fearful and anxious of the dark on some level?
Nonetheless, in time many of us begin to learn to somehow cope with the unfinished business of our fear of the dark by becoming progressively deaf and mute to its insistences. Those of us who do, we effectively endeavour to teach ourselves the error of becoming dull to the voice of our heart’s own prods and promptings. In so doing, we become calloused to the soft urgencies that are purposely innate, being those purposes that by design exist to deliberately encourage what should for all of us be a life of “LIVING AUTHENTICALLY”.
Living “an authentic life” is, firstly, a life that doesn’t just simply “subsist”. Nor is it a life that relentlessly perpetuates by being stuck in the modality of diminished capacity. On all levels, brokenness, isolation, loneliness, separation and, frequently abandonment too, are not the hallmarks of what should, for all intents and purposes, be a well-centred and flourishing life. “Living authentically” begins with a sense of belonging and of identity. With that being said, my heart bleeds for every orphan child and person that lives a life permanently estranged from the bond that comes with relationship and connection to its parent. To place an exclamation point on their plight, I liken the effects of such a life to subsisting in an endless fear of the dark.
Even more staggering than the numbers of orphans that exist in the natural, which at the same time is an astonishing indictment and blight upon the heart of all mankind, so too in the spiritual, being the very essence and core of what and who we are, we find the world strewn with multitudes of orphan children and adults. The world is a living graveyard replete with people who not only do not know their Father, but they don’t even know His name. These are those brothers and sisters who live daily “in the fear of the dark”. These are all those who live what amounts to incomplete lives, lives of shallow subsistence, lives perpetuated with the poverty of barrenness, and the brokenness of not belonging, lives robbed of being intimately connected to the heart of their Father.
And often, it is all because the voice that is “the fear of the dark” grew dim at some point in time. It is not without significance either that the fear of the dark tends to predominate for most “at an early age”. This distinction raises again the obvious question once more “of why”? In its final analysis, it would seem highly plausible that the fear of the dark predominates at a young age because, in His infinite wisdom, God scripts in each person’s heart a homing signal that from a very young age calls us all home, to a place and relationship where fear is forever abolished, to were connection with our Father ultimately destroys all barrenness and aloneness by establishing genuine providence, identity and belonging.
As with every parental example evidenced in our untainted fellow creatures of the wild, it would seem that behind this universal hum from within, our own Father has engineered in the souls of all of His own, a deep-seated self-preservation unction that by design manifests early on in life. Through the homing beacon of the call of the fear of aloneness, brought upon deliberately “by darkness”, a fear that is accompanied by a concomitant sense of vulnerability, it is in seeking refuge with our Father, that the foundations for living authentically come to us sooner rather than later. It is the Father’s heart that ALL be sustained by a personal umbilical with the very source of all life and real relationship and profound love.
"A child has been born for us.
We have been given a son who will be our ruler.
His names will be Wonderful Advisor and Mighty God, Eternal Father and Prince of Peace."
- ISAIAH 9:6 -
For all those yet orphaned, for all those sadly widowed, for all those living in the fear of the dark, the Father’s promise to ALL of an authentic life is the promise of a life filled not with “a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love and of a sound mind." – 2 TIMOTHY 1:7. Which comes from relationship with our Father. As such, it would not be unlike the Father God that I have come to know and to love to purposefully allow the soul’s own fear for the dark to prod and prompt the youthful heart to turn early on to the very life and relationship that not only sustains it, and that will not only banish fear altogether with inner peace, but that entirely replaces dark instead with light. We know this to be true because God tells us that He has purposed to replace all darkness with permanent light.
“And there shall be no night there;
and they need no candle, neither light of the sun;
for the Lord God giveth them light:
and they shall reign for ever and ever.”
- REVELATION 22:5 -
Never will there be the occasion for any of His children to ever feel the fear of darkness again. Never will they ever feel like orphans. Never shall the widow ache alone in the dark of night. Never will any who come home ever be left out in the dark, all alone, merely subsisting. But they shall all abide, each and every one, in the richness of the light of His love forever, for there shall forever more be no more darkness. For all those who follow their homing beacon to come into the arms of their Father, His love letter to all of mankind emphatically declares our Father in heaven to be “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.” – PSALMS 68:5.
Whilst the Father lovingly teaches us not to fear “the dark”, on the other hand, by complete opposite, the world teaches us to fear “the light”. In fact, the world teaches everything that is opposite to the heart of the Father. It teaches us that in life, we come in alone and that we go out alone, a message that seeds fear. And fear, all fear, fear of death, like fear of the dark, is the ingrained fear of nothing less than being completely alone. Death is the prospect of absolute aloneness, and of being completely separated from life and love.
The world teaches us to fear loss of independence, convincing us that independence brings fullness of life, whilst in fact it is specifically independence that ultimately fosters a life of LIVING INAUTHENTICALLY. Which is effectively an incomplete life. A life of less, not more. Because in the end, independence separates us from the hand that feeds us, and the heart that loves us, and the voice that speaks to us as a Father to a child.
In fact, independence produces the very thing God wants to spare us all from. Orphans. And in making us orphans, independence likewise produces the fear of the dark. In fact, of this darkness, the world seeks that we should abide in it forever. Because the prince of darkness knows that in the end, for those who exalt the kingdom of independence, MATTHEW 8:12 has this to say, “but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." For as with Adam and Eve before, in choosing independence, we exalt the prince of darkness, who was not only the first to seek independence, but subsequently deceived Adam and Eve to seek it too.
God, on the other hand, says “I will not leave you as orphans.” – JOHN 14:18. Only a collision with the heart of God, and a revelation of His kingdom, will successfully dismantle the belief systems that we carry as a canvas and portrait of what the world would have us consider to be the truth. The world system is the counterfeit of the kingdom system, and is continually in opposition with all that the kingdom and heart of the Father represents. The world wants you to choose it as your life companion, and once you have, you soon discover yourself to be increasingly alone. And in that aloneness, it wants to teach you fear.
But God overcomes all fear, and furthermore bequeaths upon those who seek Him, an inner peace that surpasses all understanding. And it is a peace that comes from one thing, and that is from knowing in the most fundamental and relevant and significant way, that we are NOT alone, and never have been. That we are NOT orphans. That we are NOT widows. That is why our LORD Jesus is the veritable “Prince of Peace”, and why our arch enemy is called the “prince of darkness”.
So what then of dark that we should fear it? For even in the deepest of night, we need fear nothing, for alone we never are. He is with us always. Then, now, and for always. He is with us yesterday, today and tomorrow. Our LORD is the merchant of hope, of all hope. He will never forsake us, nor leave us.
What then of aloneness?
For being alone is the illusion man wears
until the scales are removed from his eyes.
- To God be all the glory. Forever and ever. Amen.
- God’s richest blessings, Wayne Biehn