Thoughts on Solitude and
the Need to Be Alone
in Nature With God

While I don’t agree with all that Thoreau writes about, I find in him a man who is akin to me with his need for solitude, and a love of nature.

We wouldn’t find him as someone who might be quoted from in a sermon, or a biblical text, but there is a wisdom there.

At this time in my life, both [my wife] Carol and I need to learn how to slow down more, and follow the pace of the rivers and the trees.

Too many people are caught-up in hurrying here and there, for their next appointment, or rushing home to do whatever.

My time in solitude and in finding that quiet place to pray or paint, is now becoming more and more important to me.

There is much that we could learn from just sitting on a rock and taking the time to watch a bird, or look at the sunlight as it glistens on a lake or a pond.

We all need to pursue and find a sense of simplicity, because really life shouldn’t be something that is so complex, perhaps we make it so.

Jesus has taught us many things,with many parables about seeds of thought, good and bad soil, being alert and ready, and perhaps even more important, finding that place to enter into prayer with Him, in the midst of a chaotic world.

In the early morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house, and went away to a secluded place, and was praying there, (Mark 1:35)

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them,” (Walden, 323-324).

Selah,
~ Stephen Hanson

Stephen Hanson of In His Truth Ministries came to the LORD is a special way in 1975 and has prophesied regularly since. In these end-time birthing pangs we are reminded that judgment must first begin with the household of God. Will we be prepared and ready?

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