During my 30 years of working at the World Bank and 8 years at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, I spent my lunch hours in solitude and apart from the character that I was probably born with, the following verse is one of several reasons why I did that. It says:
“Better is a dry morsel and quietness with it than a house full of feasting and strife.” (Prov. 17:1)
Occasionally I analyze my gravitation to solitude because it was not intentional. During those solitary lunch breaks I would see the same people having lunch together, day-in and day-out and thinking to myself that it is nice to have a once-in-a-while lunch with a friend, with emphasis added on, “once-in-a-while”, because I have learned to enjoy solitude. It is an odd behavior for one who loves people so much, and when I think of the possible reasons why I gravitated to solitude and have done so all of my life, several non-conclusive possibilities emerge.
One is that solitude is an innate part of my calling. I am a minister and ministers are thinkers and crowds are not the best places where one can think deeply.
Another reason is my independent nature. Like formal institutions, whether they are Churches or corporations, groups of people tend to require that each member think and behave alike and if you do not conform then you are out. I lost a lot of friends when I stopped certain behaviors. I did not quit. They put me out. It works the opposite way as well because the minute that Christians discover that I am a Christian they start feeding me with a bunch of things that I refuse to conform to. They start parroting things that I thought about during my hours of solitude and decided that I won’t buy into the nonsense. For example, they say, “Every day above ground is a good day.” I don’t buy it because there are those for whom life is so bad that they wish they could die. They also say, “Have a blessed day.” I know that they mean well, but when I thought about it, I reasoned that a blessed day is not my responsibility. It is God’s responsibility. He is the one who decides if He is going to bless me. My only job is to try to experience it so sometimes, I will respond by saying, “That is God’s business.” Also, I don’t stand up in Church when the Scripture is read and sometimes I am the only one sitting because the best way to revere the Word of God is not to stand up when it is read but to actually try to live by it. I consider myself a non-conformist who deeply loves people, who deeply enjoys fellowship, but who often gravitates to my calling which involves a lot of solitude.
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