The Homing Signal

This is a post I wrote for a Facebook status, back when I used to do a thing called 'testimonial Tuesday'. I was reminded of it via the 'On this day' app and I am posting it here because I didn't want it to be lost again for another year. These testimonies are precious.

Answered prayer seems to be the theme currently, but that is not always the case.
This testimonial Tuesday I want to share two scriptures.
Psalm 18:6
But in my distress I cried out to the LORD; yes, I prayed to my God for help. He heard me from his sanctuary; my cry to him reached his ears.
I remember being on mission in Albania, at the lowest point in my life, so far. I had come with great expectation. I had been doing a residential course for the previous year. A bunch of us youngsters all living together. And I had made some fantastic friends during that year. But a recent miscalculated romantic situation had turned things a little sour. The people I had been closest to had returned to the UK. I was a foreigner in a foreign land. I was surrounded by Christian brothers and sisters, but yet I had never felt more alone.
And then, even in times of friendship there was a present sense of alienation. That these friendships were merely convenience. If they knew the real me, I thought, they would leave sharpish.
And out there in the Albanian mountains, I literally cried myself to sleep. Such a hollow dull and profound ache in my soul. The anguish of an empty existence.
And at this low point, in my loneliness, I like the psalmist, cried out to the LORD. And he heard me.
The next day a young lady came to join our party. And rather surprisingly, she took a shine to me. We became inseparable for the two weeks we were together. And although it did turn into a rather short lived romance back in the UK, it was primarily a soul connection. A deep friendship. And I knew, the moment she arrived, she was a direct answer to my prayer. The Lord had heard me.
But It hasn't always been this way.
The second scripture I want to share is Habbukuk 1:2
'How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen?'
I've lifted this out of context, because I feel the nature of frustration expressed is ubiquitous to the human experience. How many of us have said these words? I would venture that all Christians experience this at times.
I share this because this sense of alienation is ongoing. This loneliness in the presence of company has been present all my life. The young lady in Albania, proved to be a band aid on the gash of loneliness, although a very reassuring one.
I think I have been looking for deep fellowship all my life. Sometimes even when I have it.
I think there is a holy lonely restlessness, if I am honest, that cannot be filled with human relationship alone. It is the soul longing for home, it is deep calling to deep. It is the bass note resonating throughout existence, to know God, and to be known.
And it drives us to him, When there is nowhere else to turn. In the same way pain tells us we are bleeding, so we can treat the wound, this soulish longing is the symptom that points to the cause of our despair. So finally we may address it, and embrace it, because it is our homing signal.
But in a temporal sense, I have often felt lonely in my church. Friendships, historically have not amounted to much, but again more recently, I have reason for gratitude. Some very special people have come into my life in the last few years, and that temporal loneliness has resided. The Lord has once more 'heard my cry '.
And in my gratitude I do not forget, that it is a blessing, but not a replacement for the love that truly satisfies.
He who knows me. And he who loves me. Jesus.
This is my testimony this Tuesday.