Is something good actually coming out of this loneliness?

Some seasons strip you down to almost nothing. The crowd thins out. The phone goes quiet. You sit with yourself and wonder if something went wrong, or if God simply forgot to include you. But Peter wrote that verse to people who were scattered and alone, people who had lost almost everything. He had watched Jesus be deserted on the worst night of his life. Peter knew this feeling from the inside. And what he saw, looking back, was that God was not absent in those stripped-down seasons. He was building.

"But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you."

- 1 Peter 5:10 (KJV)

Today, take a blank piece of paper and write down one way you are different now compared to January. One thing you handle better, one fear that lost some of its grip, one thing you know about God that you did not know then. Hold that page and say, out loud: he is not finished.

Father, I have not always seen what you were doing in the lonely stretches. But I trust that your hands have been working. Finish what you started in me. Amen.