Devotions from Henri Houwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love

Today’s devotion is on loneliness and the importance of trying to find the source of this feeling. I think Henri dealt with this a lot in his life.  We are all inclined to either run away from our loneliness or to dwell in it. If we run away it doesn’t diminish; we simply force if out of our minds temporarily.  When we start dwelling on it, our feelings only become stronger and we can slip into depression. Our spiritual task is to find the source which is not always easy to do as we can’t do it with our minds. It is a work of the heart and with our heart we can search for that place without fear.  As we discover where these feelings emerge from, it will lose some of its power over us. The pain of our loneliness might be rooted in our deepest vocation or our call to live completely for God.  When we experience in our innermost being the truth of our loneliness, we can find that this loneliness is not just tolerable but may be even fruitful. It can lead us to an even deeper knowledge of God’s love.