Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.

...what God has done in Christ exhausts all that God has to do for us.

The followers of Jesus are to be different-different from both the nominal church and the secular world, different from both the religious and the irreligious. The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete delineation anywhere in the New Testament of the Christian value-system, ethical standard, religious devotion, attitude to money, ambition, life-style and network of relationships-all of which are totally at variance with those of the non-Christian world. And this Christian Counterculture is the life of the kingdom of God, a fully human life indeed but lived out under the divine rule.

Our calling is to enjoy God as well as glorify Him. Real fulfillment relates to the purpose for which we were made, to be in reference to God, to be in personal relationship with Him, to be fulfilled by Him, and thus to have an affirmation of life. Christianity should never give any onlooker the right to conclude that Christianity believes in the negation of life. Christianity is able to make a real affirmation because we affirm that it is possible to be in personal relationship to the personal God who is there and who is the final environment of all He created. All else but God is dependent, but being in the image of God, man can be in personal relationship to that which is ultimate and has always been. We can be fulfilled in the highest level of our personality and in all the parts and portions of life... There is nothing Platonic in Christianity... The whole man is to be fulfilled; there is to be an affirmation of life that is filled with joy. Death in the City (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press: 1969) 26