A Solitary Place
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
Mark 1:35, NIV
One of the things I am working on putting into my daily routine (though with not much success lately — I’m not really a morning person, and it’s been SO HOT this summer!) is a morning walk at a trail near the lake, before the day gets too hot. God actually spoke clearly to me about this just this past week, because this morning walk at the lake isn’t just for physical fitness — it’s for spiritual fitness. I need this daily morning walk by the lake in order for my soul to hear God more clearly.
One of my favorite parts in the book Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery is when Marilla tells Anne that she must say her prayers before bed, and Anne tells Marilla that she has never been taught how to pray before. So Marilla tries to explain how to kneel beside the bed and recite her list of petitions to God, followed by a hearty “Amen!”
Anne’s response is, in my opinion, just about the purest form of prayer from a child’s heart that I’ve ever heard:
“Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray, I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone, or in the deep, deep woods, and I’d look up into the sky — up — up — up — into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just feel a prayer.”
This reminds me of my own childhood, how I would go out into the field on my grandparents’ property and sit on my rock — a big boulder at the top of a hill — and I would feel the presence of God in the breeze around me, in the strength of the mountains, in the vastness of the woods, in the creaking of branches, in the song of birds.
It also reminds me of Chapter 3 in Barbara Brown Taylor’s book Leaving Church in which she describes how she first came to identify the presence of what she eventually knew to be God, though she didn’t have the language for it as a child: “The Divine Presence was strongest outdoors, and most palpable when I was alone. When I think of my first cathedral, I am back in a field behind my parents’ house in Kansas, with every stalk of prairie grass lit up from within.”
The experience of God’s presence outside in nature is, I think, a natural thing for us, because in the beginning, we were created to walk and talk with God in the Garden. It was the first place of our intimacy with the Divine, and it is the place where God has met so many people throughout the history of the world: a burning bush, a mountaintop, a garden, a boat on the water, the wilderness. Story after story, God speaks to us in and through God’s natural world.
The heavens declare the glory of God,
the dome of the sky speaks the work of his hands.
Every day it utters speech,
every night it reveals knowledge.
Without speech, without a word,
their line goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
(Psalm 19:2-5, CJB)
Where can I go to escape from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I climb up to heaven, you are there.
If I lie down in Sh’ol, you are there.
If I fly away with the wings of the dawn and land beyond the sea,
even there your hand would lead me,
your right hand would hold me fast.
If I say, “Let the darkness surround me, let the light around me be night,”
even darkness like this is not too dark for you;
rather, night is as clear as day; darkness and light are the same.
(Psalm 139:7-12, CJB)
For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made.
(Romans 1:20, NET)
I love this simplicity of feeling God’s presence in nature, of feeling a prayer. Even Jesus knew that to really be intimate with God, one had to get away in nature, to “a solitary place.” Jesus did this often himself. There are many examples, especially throughout the book of Mark, where Jesus retreats from his disciples or from the crowds — or sometimes even retreats with his disciples — to focus on communing with the Father.
I want to be like Jesus. I want to retreat often to “a solitary place” in nature where I can hear the Father’s heartbeat, hear the Spirit whispering to me. I can tell a difference in my spiritual and even emotional responses between the times when I am able to get away into nature, and those times when I go for long stretches without getting away into nature. The longer I go between my times in nature, the more my stress levels increase, I get focused on all the wrong things, and I lose my sense of direction and purpose. But when I am able to get away to “a solitary place,” even if it is just spending half an hour sitting in the grass under my sycamore tree in the backyard in the middle of the night, listening to crickets and frogs and the trickle of the creek, I can feel my soul being refreshed and restored.
So my challenge to you in all this is to find your “solitary place.” Where do you go to get away with God? Do you have a favorite place to escape to? Maybe it is a bench in your yard where you can watch hummingbirds. Maybe it’s a trail by a lake. Maybe you like to get out on a boat on the water. Or even go for a drive in the country with the windows down. Whatever that place is that restores your soul, find it, and make sure that you go there often.
Getting alone with God in a solitary place was absolutely the heartbeat of Jesus’s life and ministry. It can and should be ours as well.
Go out into nature, and feel a prayer.