“I glimpsed a one-way mirror in the door… and the face staring back wasn’t the one I had shaved that morning. I shifted angles to find my hazel-colored eyes, but the sockets were empty. My mouth was twisted in a toothy grimace, working, like I was screaming.

So, this demon is who I have become?”

In his story: “Quelling the Dragon,” Allen sees a caricature of his Godless soul. “Freaked” out, he drives to a solitary place in the wilderness to think.

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“Thinking” can be a life-changing experience, and we do so little of it–alone. Social networking, radio, reading material, TV, and general hubbub, crowd out crucial time to make decisions that can change or confirm our direction. I am learning that “alone” means listening. I require uncluttered, inactive space for God to tweak and tune my priorities. Conclusions I have settled upon (sometimes decades ago!) need revisiting–to redirect my focus now.

“Alone” is a place, not a condition. For Jesus, his place was an olive garden (no, no, not that Olive Garden) Luke 21:37. Other times Jesus withdrew to a “desert place”  Matt. 14:13.

Jesus called this alone place a “closet,” meaning a secret room where we shut the door on all outside influences to think. Matt. 6:6. In my closet God speaks to my soul, and OVER THE MONTHS AND YEARS, he gets through my thick skull that his agenda is written into my daily life. “Thinking” in this secret place is changing me, one encounter with God at a time.

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Allen spent time alone in the wilderness (his closet).  Upon hard, uninterrupted reflection, he concluded that Jesus could change him from a violent “creature” into a reborn creation. Read Allen’s whole story: “Quelling the Dragon.”

It’s something to think on.