Depending how you define "Day of Solitude"....

Does it count as a day of solitude, if you're alone in a crowd of strangers?

I take my seat in the rows of human beings and start the audiobook I've bought for this purpose.  I'm burdened about life. I feel like I'm struggling to be what God wants me to be, and my mind replays my weaknesses, my fears for the future.  Oh God, you need to speak!  This is why I need a day with you!

The brown fields of northern Indiana morph into the brown buildings of south Chicago, as I listen to Ravi Zacharias read his book, Jesus Among Other Gods.  

He talks about the hunger of our hearts, and how various religions try to deal with these hungers, and then how Jesus deals with them.   Like the woman at the well, when transformed by Jesus Christ, our hearts become part of the solution for hunger rather than part of the problem.  No other religion dares to suggest that the answer to our hunger is a person.  Jesus didn't say he would show us the way.  He just said, "I am the way."

I arrive in Chicago at Orchestra Hall, my favorite haunt for hearing The Messiah by the Apollo Chorus.

I hear the ancient words, "Behold, a virgin shall conceive..." and right there, as Ravi Zacharias pointed out in the train, the story of Jesus Christ steps out of the realm of the natural. 

On the way back, I begin to feel alone, and my mind re-hashes my weaknesses.  The train is hurtling back the way we came, flashing past Subway and Taco Bell and the United States Steel Yard and a florescent sign for Miller Lite and acres of pole lights.

"Watch your step, next stop East Chicago," the abrasive voice blares through the train.

I'm listening to the song, "If you say go, we will go; if you say wait, we will wait", when God says to me, "You would go."  It's not a question or a command.  I begin to cry, right across the aisle from the young guy twisting a plastic Coke bottle, but I don't care who sees me, because I suddenly know that God is with me.  God, who knows my weaknesses, my failures, my lack of discipline, my desire to be a people pleaser, by tendency to let people control me, still says, "I know you're trying. Stop beating dead horses.  Get up and try again tomorrow." 

So I'm wiping my eyes.  I feel God all around me, and I realize that of all the people on the train, I am the least alone of anyone.  No matter who you went to Chicago with, there's always something you don't know about them, and something they don't understand about you.

But God knows me perfectly, knows the mess I make of things daily, and still he has just quieted my heart with one touch of his hand on my shoulder:  "Shhhhh.  Be quiet.  Just keep going and stop agonizing."    

This is why I love to take a day of solitude in a crowd every now and then.  Because it's not really solitude. People think I'm alone, when they look over at the empty seat beside me.  

But they're wrong.